Reticence
by D.Myrr
Summary: In a world where the sorting goes horribly wrong, Hermione finds herself alone in a pit of snakes. Her limitless potential doesn't help her in finding a way out of her situation; however, she eventually finds a friend in a person she least expects to. How will her journey unfold in a war torn world? Realistic Slytherin Semi AU with canon deviation. Dramione. Hermione centric.
1. Chapter 1: Year One

**Disclaimer: ****Harry Potter and its characters are the exclusive property of JK Rowling. This is just a work of fanfiction and I make no money from this.**

**A/N:**** I intend for this to be a somewhat realistic Hermione in Slytherin AU. So the Slytherin house is neither a snake pit with brutal politicking, nor a congregation of misunderstood do gooders willing to accept muggle borns with open arms. They're kids. Kids hostile to things they do not like or respect. Hermione fits the bill. And since, in this AU, she is extremely introverted, don't expect her to wand wave and put people in their place. This does not, however, mean that she suffers any sort of physical abuse or broken bones. Kids being supervised rarely, if ever, tend to go that far. They can be _very _grating, though.**

**There is eventual romance, but it is (extremely) slow burn. I also intend to cover each year within 12-15k words, if possible, so you don't have to worry about pacing. **

**If that isn't your jam, then this is where we part ways. Thank you for taking a look.**

* * *

**Chapter 1 (Year One)**

"And if something there scares you, hun, write back, won't you?" her mother said, the edges of her eyes tightening in tension, the border of her mouth resembling an inversion of the letter U. She pulled Hermione into a terse hug. "We'll write to the headmaster, and—"

"I know, mum," Hermione said, rolling her eyes the way you did when you were eleven and on the verge of setting out on a new adventure, discovering a new world. "I know. And I'll be back for Christmas, I promise. But you'll see, mum; you'll see that there'll be no trouble whatsoever, none at all. There'll be magic, mum! Magic! You've been to Diagon. You've seen them. These people aren't like Evelyn from form B, or that big meanie, Mary, who sat behind me in class and tugged my hair, or even… but mum, the train will leave any moment now. I have to go. Good bye, good bye."

And with another parting hug, and a whispered word that she—mother—convey to father how much Hermione would miss him—he'd been held back by being under the weather, and his commitments to dentistry—she strode through the brick wall and into platform nine three quarters. Ah, the unbridled joy that coursed through her veins by just being in the vicinity of that shining steam engine, shimmering bridge between the mundane and the magical! A surreal feeling thrummed through her heart watching these men and women in bowler hats and three-piece suits and suave robes and splendid gowns hug children her age, draw them near. She caught snippets of conversation with odd names mentioned and odd terms thrown about. So novel, so nice! She was grinning even as she got on train and found herself an empty compartment. So happy! So, so happy! The steam engine, like a sky lark, sang the promise of a new life. Sunlight streaked through the slatted windows and turned the slick floor a brilliant orange. She pushed her trunk under the seat and just sat there and listened to the sounds of shuffling feet outside, of all these strangers who were like her, who studied in a place where she would finally, finally! belong. Perhaps someone would separate themselves from the throng and check in here; and they would speak and be friends.

With trembling hands, she extracted a book from her bag—first year Charms, which she had already read cover to cover; memorized, even— and started to aimlessly flip through it, fidgeting all along, tapping her feet against the seat rail, waiting, waiting in agitation for someone to come, to check in, wondering why no one did, why no one would enter, speak to her about—well, whatever it was that witches discussed.

Ten minutes into the journey, the door slid open. Two students, a male and a female, both maybe sixteen, stumbled in, giggling, sucking each other's faces off. The girl came up for air and looked at her with a raised, nonchalant eyebrow. Face flaming, Hermione mumbled an apology—_for what, though?_ a dull voice in her head said— and, dragging with her her trunk, scurried out of the compartment.

The next compartment held people who were probably in year four. There was a single seat unoccupied. She sat there and shakily pretended to go through her transfiguration text, which, again, she had already memorized. They let her be and ignored her the rest of the journey.

* * *

Rain swirled in the skies, and Hermione shivered and pulled her cloak close to her. They were led to boats by a big man with a booming voice. He said 'Firs' years here' in a funnily weird way, and she giggled a little even as he said it; then felt her cheeks redden when he heard her and met her eyes. She ducked her head in implied apology: she so hated disappointing people. Yet he only offered her a gentle smile, which she reciprocated with a watery one, an uncertain one, feeling oh so horribly conscious. Was this like that time when Evelyn had laughed at her condescendingly and called her a nasty know it all, a stooge that sucked up to teachers for good grades? Would the big man, who now seemed awfully nice—he had even offered her a smile; the first smile she received in this world—take offence and think she was mocking him, like Evelyn mocked her? It was too late now. Too late to take it back. She'd find him later, away from prying eyes, and apologize.

She got on a boat with a blond boy, a girl with a pug nose, and a dark-skinned boy with a stony face that looked as though it had never broken into a smile. The blond leapt in last, rocking the boat dangerously, and she felt the sting of cold water against her cheek. She kept mum. He waved his hand at his two friends and said, "next boat for the two of you. Now shoo."

"Apologies," he said to her, taking the seat opposite. He'd noticed the splash he'd made, then.

"Oh, no, no, it's nothing, nothing at all." She smiled. A thin film of sweat beaded her brow. At long last she had a chance to say something to someone her age, someone who would understand exactly what she went through all these years, who would understand everything; but now, just when she needed them most, words— bosom buddies she'd found entrapped in the bound covers of dusty tomes, and bonded with in solitude—seemed unwilling to emerge from the tip of her tongue. She tried speaking, and was only able to emit a slightly strangulated squeak.

They all turned to her. Hermione blushed.

"Nice weather, no?" she settled for saying.

"It's raining," the blond said, raising an eyebrow.

"Hm." Hermione nodded mechanically. "I always knew I was different," she said suddenly, spiritedly, throwing caution to the winds. "I knew I was like you through and through, and not them, not those other people who laughed at me and found me strange and… and I'm Hermione Granger, by the way, and I've read all our textbooks, and oh there's so much to study, but magic seems so wonderful! So wonderful, and I'll learn it all. All of it!" She extended her hand, beaming beatifically, embarrassment a thing forgotten.

The girl was giving her a look not unlike the one Evelyn gave her at school. Her lip was curled in a smile, except it was the sort of smile that made you think she was laughing at you, and not with you. The stone-faced boy was staring at her as though she were something he'd found under his boot while wading through dung on a particularly muddy day. And the blond merely raised the other eyebrow, looked at her proffered hand, smirked, said something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like mud-something—but she couldn't quite catch it—then extended and shook, and made a show of slowly retracting his hand in horror and carefully wiping it against a crust of mud collected at the bottom of the boat. The pug-nosed girl giggled and stone-face cracked a grin.

"Malfoy," the blond boy said suavely, voice dripping with so much insincerity that even someone as socially awkward as she caught on. "Draco Malfoy. Pardon me, miss Granger, but you—you are muggle born, aren't you? Your manner says as much, as does your rather… regrettable demeanour. After all, we are not at fault for where we are from, or what flows in our veins, or our less than adequate… upbringing." He said the last word with a smile, but his tone was smug and the words cut deep.

She'd read and mostly ignored a small, vague section on Purebloods in Hogwarts, a History. It had mentioned a few unsavoury associations and some ideals they steadfastly upheld. At that time, it'd felt grotesquely exaggerated, and she'd turned up her nose at the little details with an indelicate snort. Yet now…now she was not so sure.

There were a hundred things that sprung to mind, a hundred things she could say. But what she felt instead, on that day, was some secret hope harboured somewhere within her shatter into a million fragments. Experience had educated her that the best course to adopt when mocked was to suffer in silence, and she was sure she was being mocked, and that too for no fault of hers. So, she withdrew into a silent shell. She still didn't understand half of what Draco Malfoy said, and she wasn't sure she wanted to, but suddenly, somehow, this world didn't seem much different from the one she left behind, even though she'd only trawled on its periphery and couldn't possibly claim that with any degree of certainty.

She might have been left to stew in that gloom if Hogwarts hadn't, at that moment, loomed over them.

And the sight took her breath away. And the cares from a moment ago were uneasily set aside.

* * *

The sorting, up to her name, had been short and swift. She had heard the three on the boat mention Slytherin, and she had read in her spare time about Slytherin's history, and You Know Who's story, so she knew which house to avoid. No, no, it was Gryffindor for her; Gryffindor, house of the brave, that had set on his way the brave Albus Dumbledore. Or Ravenclaw, perhaps, where her intellect would be best utilized.

So when she stumbled up to that stool, rendered clumsy by the stares of hundreds of curious eyes, and when that hat stayed on for what seemed like an hour, saying nary a word, she grew worried. Then a soft voice said, _I'm sorry, dear, but someday you'll understand. _

And then the hat split its brim and screamed "Slytherin!"

As she unsteadily wobbled off the stool and slunk past a white-faced professor Mcgonagall, she found herself recipient to a hundred unkind faces, a hundred hostile stares. And just like that, Hermione Granger knew life at Hogwarts would not be all so different after all.

* * *

**A/N:**** The hat's lack of reasoning behind the sorting isn't some grand conspiracy. It's just that, if that artifact can actually rummage through your mind and connect instances to form its own conclusions about your personality, then perhaps it is best that it doesn't divulge to you some of those aspects, both due to the possibility of denial, and the prospect that, at eleven, you yourself might be unaware of what sort of a person you are, and any such counsel would essentially condemn you to either forcing yourself to prove the hat wrong, or to falling into a rut and turning what was said into a self fulfilling prophecy. I mean, I, for example, just turned twenty three, and am still unsure about facets of my personality. In this case, yes, she pursues wisdom, but why? How many people in pursuit of wisdom and knowledge do so without the presence of at least an iota of ambition? How many people who can cope with abuse and make do with whatever they are offered can't be considered resourceful and worthy of a place in a house that prides cunning and ambition? Moreover, would a eleven year old's mind, that is both one track and binary, be able to accept any of these conclusions? Food for thought. **

**So, to that extent, the hat is somewhat non-canon. The premise is based on the idea that you often cannot separate two interwoven qualities from each other for the sake of sorting, as one may not exist without the other.**

**Thank you for reading, and please leave a review!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

It'd taken her five days to crack. For the first four, Hermione Granger had pretended that the snide snipes about her upbringing did not affect her. But there was only so much time one could spend in a dully decked dorm with Daphne Greengrass (blessedly quiet, but clearly uncomfortable in her presence; at the very least a believer in blood supremacy if not an out and out supremacist), Pansy Parkinson and Tracy Davis. She had expected Parkinson—pug nosed girl from the boat, short one tooth; _it'll grow back soon, _she'd said airily—to be the worst. But no. No. It was Davis instead. Tracy Davis, furtive faced half blood with restless eyes and brown hair and a high-pitched nervous giggle. Davis, who on day one had approached her in a friendly manner, but had soon discovered that Hermione was ostracized by everyone else for her supposedly low birth. So she too had thoughtlessly aped it. Or perhaps she had given it a lot of thought: Davis, Hermione had heard Pansy whisper to Daphne dismissively, had lost her father years ago and had for company only a _mudblood_ mother she was ashamed of. Yes, perhaps she had given it too much thought. Perhaps she was too desperate to fit in.

Whatever her reason, though, she too had gleefully partaken in calling Hermione a mud-blood and sneering at her every time she was in their vicinity. Hermione walked separately to classes now, and she stayed in the library long hours, just like at her last school. When she returned to her dorm at ten, she went to bed immediately. The second night she'd cried herself to sleep. By the fourth, _mud-blood_ had become _stinking, buck toothed, beaver like mud-blood. _

They hid her things. She came back on the fifth night to find her trunk open and her best dress missing. From the other side of the room, Pansy broke into a fit of giggles. Daphne carefully avoided looking at her, pretending to pore over a textbook instead, but her usually placid face was scrunched into a discomfited grimace. Tracy, though, smirked and said that Hermione better make her peace with the idea of soon roaming the school naked— not that it would get her any extra attention, of course, given how she anyway looked like an anaemic wreck someone had taken a hatchet to.

Hermione promptly burst intotears, locked her trunk with a charm sniffled out through sobs, and went downstairs to report them to a prefect. The first prefect she met looked at her funny when she told him. The second, a female, a sympathetic sixth year who had informed her as to what mudblood meant, advised her that she best keep quiet about what had happened. "Forget the whole thing and take better care of your trunk next time," she said.

So, with two hours to midnight, Hermione found herself standing outside Professor Mcgonagall's office, sobbing, steadfastly insisting that she be re-sorted: there was some mistake; she ought to have been in Gryffindor; she couldn't take it anymore.

"Miss Granger," professor Mcgonagall consoled, inviting her in, seating her next to the crackling hearth. "Miss Granger, I respect how hard for you this must be. But, surely, a bright young witch like you, who said to me in my first class that she has read 'Hogwarts, a History' cover to cover, _knows_ that once a student is sorted there cannot be a change of house."

"P…Please, professor," Hermione begged. "Please, just let me speak to the hat again, or to Professor Dumbledore, and maybe—"

"My dear." Professor Mcgonagall was sad. She tucked an errant lock of hair back into her tightly made bun and cleared her throat. "My dear, you can come to me with anything. But this… I have no power here. We get eight to ten students every year who request that they be resorted. I already know what professor Dumbledore will say, and therefore am unwilling to take this up with him. I am so sorry, Miss Granger." She reached for a quill. "Here, let me write a note for you. Take it to Severus. He'll do something about your issue."

She handed Hermione the note. But Hermione, having already suffered the indignity of one polite rejection, decided not to risk another; Professor Snape was abrasive and uncooperative at the best of times and ignored her existence in his classes. Instead, she went back to her dorm, ignored the other three, and pretended to go to sleep.

She didn't sleep that night.

* * *

_At least the boys ignore me,_ she mused, a month in. She'd really been dreading dealing with Draco Malfoy and his cronies, but he was too caught up in riling Harry Potter. Bar that one time on the boat, and another in the common room where he laughed with the rest when Pansy did what she called the _beaver imitation_, he'd not even acknowledged her existence. It was the same with Blaise Zabini, stone face from the boat. One night, she'd heard Daphne mumble to Tracy that Blaise's mother was a murderer— had, in fact, disposed off her last six husbands.

Hermione spent her time either in the library or by the lake. She still had no friends. She'd seen in the second week how miserable Harry Potter was— what, with the burden of expectation and the odd approach every five minutes of some student smitten with his history. They saw a hero. She, unlike them, saw a scrawny kid just like her, who had lost his parents and was new to the world. So she'd tried speaking to him in charms class. But his redhead friend had rebuffed her, called her a snake, a spy, and some other nonsense; and Harry had just sort of stood there and said nothing and shrugged and looked very uncomfortable. He reminded her of what Daphne was like when Tracy, now Daphne's de facto best friend, said something mean to Hermione.

Hermione hadn't tried talking to him again.

So here she was, clutching her satchel, strolling by the lake side, pondering whether or not she ought to move on to second year books. She was so caught up in thought that she only came to when she heard a bark behind her and was suddenly barrelled over. Bag came open; books spilled to the ground. A booming pronouncement of "Fang, yer' bad dog"; then the anxious owner of that voice towered over her.

"A'right there, miss?"

Hermione groaned and gathered her wits. Looked up. It was the big man from the boat ride. He had already bent down and was halfway through thrusting her books back into her bag. The dog, pitch black, bigger than any she had seen before, was sullenly staring at her with drooping ears, suitably chastised.

"Fang don' mean no harm," the man continued. "We jus' don' get no people round here oft'n." He offered her a hand and hauled her up, then handed her her bag. She looked around, and saw that, caught in her contemplation, she had somehow wandered to the edge of the school grounds and was now a few yards from a log cabin. All at once, she remembered her manners.

"I'm sorry, sir," she mumbled.

"Sir? I ain't no sir. Hagrid's me name. I'm th' gatekeeper. And yer' sorry? Sorry fer what?" Hagrid looked bewildered.

"It's my fault. I shouldn't be here. And I laughed at you a month ago, by the boat. I wanted to find you sooner and apologize, but I promise, sir—Hagrid—it slipped my mind." She tentatively reached out for the dog and patted it. It perked right back up and wagged its tail.

He looked at her carefully.

"I remem'br ya," he said after a while. "Yer the muggleborn they sent t' slyth'rin."

"I'm that mudblood, yes." The word slipped out thoughtlessly, an oversight. Somewhere along the line she'd started to see herself as unworthy and adopted the identity her dorm mates assigned to her, though her teachers told her she was a prodigy.

Hagrid alarmed her. He grasped her shoulders with a thunderous scowl, till he hurt her and she winced in pain. Then he roughly said, "who told yer' that word? Wha' worthless son o' a gun said that to ye? Don't speak about yerself tha' way, a'right?"

"Hagrid," she whispered, wide eyed. "Hagrid, you're hurting me."

He let go and stepped back and suddenly looked ashamed.

"Ah. Lost meself there fer a moment," he grumbled. "Yer the nicest slytherin I met. Don' say that word t' me again, an' if som'one says that t' yer whack em on the head. Yer worth three of em. Come, girl. Come in for a cuppa' tea. No one comes here excep' Harry, and Professor Dumbledore—great man, Dumbledore."

"I…" she was suddenly lost for words. "Sure, Hagrid. Thanks." Gratitude wormed its way into her heart.

"Din' catch yer name, missie. Wha' was it, again?"

"Hermione," she said, "Hermione Granger."

As she walked with Hagrid to his hut, Fang trotting along, a strain of hope swelled in her heart.

Hermione couldn't keep the grin off her face. She had finally found herself a friend.

* * *

**A/N:****Chapters will mostly be short, but updates will be frequent (barring circumstances such as examinations and assignments). The story will move this way at least till the end of year 4. It runs somewhat parallel to canon till that point, but does not rehash canon.  
**

**Thanks for reading and please leave a review!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

Days went by slowly. Miserably. Hermione took a measure of pride in her magnificent school work and in her advanced readings by the side, but the Slytherin common room still felt like the embalmed insides of a coffin. Suffocating. Hopelessly so.

She'd never been physically active, preferring instead, in what she was coming to consider her previous, muggle, life, the confines of the library to the repetitive monotony of exertion. But these days, she got out often. Oh, yes, very often. Having Hagrid to talk to was a boon. He could at times be like other adults. Occasionally, his booming voice contemplated things in a darker tone, and it disturbed her somewhat. But those occasions were rare. He mostly behaved like a fussy big brother. She was grateful for it.

One chilly October morning, she caught him trying to light his fireplace with an umbrella.

He set his tea table ablaze instead.

"Remains o' me broken wand," he said morosely, shaking the umbrella at her. Then his face fell. "Shouldn' hav' told yer that eith'r. Don' mind me."

"Hagrid." Hermione put her hands on her hips, the way mum at times did, when she was angry with dad and tried taking a stern tone. She let her lips go thin. She'd seen that work for Minerva Mcgonagall.

Hagrid was suitably intimidated.

"Was a student 'ere." The words spilled out in a hurried growl. He cast an eye around the four corners of his cabin, as though he feared that some apparition would at any moment appear and accost him for sharing his tale. "They snapp'd me wand and said to me t' go 'ome. But Professor Dumbl'dore told me t' stay. Said 'e needed a gatekeeper. Great man, Dumbl'dore. Great man." And, much to her alarm, Hagrid blew his nose and wiped a tear from his eye.

Hermione consoled him. Then she tried getting more out of him. But he clammed up and changed the subject. She'd find out, though. Someday, she'd find out somehow.

* * *

October's wane brought with it a roiling mist and an eerie chill. Her visits to Hagrid reduced in frequency. It was he who suggested it: she often visited him evenings, courtesy the constraint of her class timings, and with the days growing shorter and the nights longer he feared that she'd compromise her safety, that she'd fall prey to something predatory that lurked in the dark. She protested, but for once he was dead serious. He cryptically said the centaurs had warned him about something; he would not listen to reason.

So that was that, and she once more found herself cooped up in the library. She fell into a routine. Library. Class. Library again. Dorm. Lights out. Rinse and repeat. In class, she answered every question they'd let her. The praise, the points she won… it made her day. She thought for a few days she'd found out who she was. She convinced herself Hagrid was right. If, like Shakespeare said, all the world was a stage, then she was determined to cast herself in the role of an overachiever who would eventually overcome the constraint of her non-magical upbringing. She said to herself she was already far ahead, already the best, and that she'd leave in her wake a blazing trail; and then people would understand her, and come up to her, and talk to her, and tell her hi, how are you, I love you for who you are, and you're no beaver, no bucktooth, no mudblood; just a girl, just a pretty girl I want to be friends with. And she'd answer them too; answer them as she always wanted to.

But even as Hermione did all this, she had the sinking feeling that she was flailing in the dark, somehow failing at life itself. There was always a sense of disquiet, of some strange sadness that would never go away constantly gnawing at her innards. The day before Halloween, her focus turned outwards. She temporarily gave up on self-betterment and became acutely aware of what the people around her were saying. When she opened her ears to the world, all she heard were whispers, rumours— rumours about her! The Ravenclaw behind her groaned when she put her hand up in herbology. Harry's friend called her a smarmy slime-ball. Tracy dismissed her as a mud-blood know it all insecure about her upbringing.

And then came the breaking point.

In retrospect, Hermione could not help it. She'd always been a certain way. She could be snide when high strung. And when she was witness to someone butchering something she already knew the answer to, she would, for a moment, forget her tremulous nature and reinforce the timorous timber of her voice with intellectual authority.

So, when they went to charms class on Halloween—past drapes decked in colours of celebration and balustrades bound with garrulous ribbons; it was this day a decade ago that the Dark Lord fell, and there would be a big feast come evening—and when she saw Draco Malfoy, seated right behind her, struggling with the hovering charm—where, now, was his idea of blood purity?—she let the educator in her take over and snapped at him, somewhat rudely, that he wasn't doing it right; that he, of all people, with his esoteric, archaic ideas of magical superiority, ought to know that the movements were a swish and a flick, and not the reverse, and not done so gracelessly, like a blubbering idiot.

That said, Hermione turned to her work…and felt the shock of being smacked in the back of her head. The world blurred. The class burst into a braying laugh. Her hair dripped blue. Upturned inkwell. Ruined robes. Head went light. Numbness spread. From the corner of a quivering eye already filling with moisture she saw Flitwick scurrying over. She distantly noted that he was furious.

"Miss Parkinson." Professor Flitwick was almost apoplectic with rage. "Miss Parkinson, detention. Miss Granger—"

"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione whispered, trying to look dignified whilst tears dripped down her chin and mingled with ink, "I'm sorry, but…may I be excused?"

And without waiting for his response she grabbed her bag and scurried off to the girls' bathroom, the ghost of Malfoy's malevolent laugh, distinct from the others and utterly derisory, still ringing in her ear.

* * *

She'd known she'd die. She'd known it the second the ghost screamed and the crumbling toilet door came off its hinges and crashed against the wall opposite and shattered into a shower of wooden splinters. The grating of a gigantic club against a stone floor, the stench of slime and blood, the foghorn of death, the drip drip of mucus that accompanied each rumbling step, the twisted teeth lost within that hulking mass. The washbasin across caved in like a cracked egg shell under the force of a first swing that missed her skull by millimetres. Hermione Granger forgot she was a witch. Her wand she forgot amongst the countless folds of her ruined robes. Pansy Parkinson was forgotten, and so was Malfoy, and so was her own teary oath drearily undertaken a few hours ago: one that wished she were dead. She even forgot her voice, forgot how to scream. All that remained as the club went high was a memory of mother— sweet, concerned mother who would miss her so, whom she wished she had hugged tighter before she left, and hadn't lied to in her letters, and had told the truth so that they could go home, be once again a small, happy family, away from this world where everyone was cruel to her for no fault of hers. Mother, whom she wished she could hug one last time. She wished, she wished, she wished…

The club descended. The world went dark.

When Hermione Granger came to a few minutes later, the first thing she noted with detached amazement was that she wasn't dead yet, that she was lying in a goop of troll brain and troll blood and troll guts instead.

The second thing she noted was her snarling saviour. He towered over her, his robes looking positively comical as they furiously billowed in this bathroom that resembled a gas station hit by a grenade.

It was Professor Severus Snape.

And just like that, Hermione Granger vehemently wished that that troll had just put its club through her skull instead.

* * *

**A/N:**Draco's behaviour is a work in progress. It might get worse before it gets better. I'm sticking to realism, so expect him to cycle through dislike, indifference, envy, and so on and so forth. His attitude towards Hermione changes after one specific incident, but that's still some way off.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review! I really appreciate em, and they motivate me to keep writing! Until next time, then. Have a great week!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Hermione had never seen Professor Snape so angry. Sure, he was scornful in class, what with the curled lip and the gimlet eye, the clipped tone and the brusque turn of phrase; but she'd never seen him this way. His cold countenance was cruelly crumpled into a snarl and alive with an all-consuming fury. His discoloured teeth looked in the dim lit room like ever so many typewriter keys in the process of being punched. He did not say a word— just stood there a moment, then stooped and checked the strength of her breath with an extended finger. Then he looked her in the eye, tight jawed, and she had a funny feeling that something was scraping away at the back of her brain, some blunted scalpel tightly tied in a tourniquet, so that she could barely feel its application. But there was a pressure. Perhaps an imagined one; but, nonetheless, for a fraction of a second, as she stared into that smouldering eye— the abyss— she had a feeling he was rudely flipping through her memories, reading her mind as though it were a textbook and dogearing each page of experience as though he were an unruly student.

Then he hauled Hermione up, and the feeling subsided. He cleaned her clothing with a careless flick of the wand, caught her elbow, and, without a word, marched her in the direction of the Slytherin common room. They ghosted past portraits that peeked at her; past chain mail that in the desolate dark seemed like ever so many intimidating men of yesteryear lining the walls; past the Bloody Baron himself who even as he hovered peered at her in a way that made her insides squirm; and to the Baron Professor Snape bit out, "tell Dumbledore I have a student to deal with. The troll has been taken care of. I will report to him by midnight."

The Baron bowed and floated away. They went the other way, and wove their way past deserted halls. Down they went, into the dungeon; and from there, to the portrait by the artificial lake—entrance to the common room. He spat out the password and pushed her past the portrait. Students were gathered; students talking, students milling around, some laughing, some studying, some discussing the day's happenings in a hush. All noise ceased when Professor Snape entered after her. The portrait swung shut behind them.

"Mr. Rowle," Snape began with a sneer, addressing the head-boy, who stiffened immediately, suddenly terrified of this thirty something twig thin, sour faced, sallow school teacher, "Mr. Rowle, what time is it?"

"…ten, sir?" Rowle stammered. He was slack with sleep before Snape entered. Now he was standing to attention and sweating profusely.

"Yes, _sir._" Professor Snape strode over to stand next to Rowle. He then looked at Rowle as though he were beneath notice, beneath basic dignity. "And at what time, Rowle, do we snuff out the hearth, and blow out the last lamp, and tell our charges to return to their dorms?"

"N…nine thirty, sir."

"Then why," Snape said slowly, "why, you _incompetent _dunderhead, are your charges still out of their beds?"

The common room burst into sudden activity— the bustling beat of feet trying to flee the professor's barbs.

"Back to your dorms, then," an ashen faced Rowle said. He looked as though he would keel over any moment. "Back, all of you."

Hermione spotted her dorm mates giving her odd looks as they took started to move away. Even Pansy let curiosity overrule animosity, and was treating her to a contemplative look rather than her customary sneer.

"Miss Davis, miss Parkinson, miss Greengrass. Stay." Professor Snape still looked thunderous and still wore a scowl. "I wish to have a word with the three of you. Rowle, you may go too. This is the second time in two weeks I have warned you. Next time, I will not be so…charitable." He hissed out the last syllable.

Rowle almost tripped over himself in his eagerness to get away. Snape stayed silent till the common room emptied. He just kept staring at her dorm mates until they started to fidget. Even the usually nonchalant Greengrass fixed her eyes on the animated snake carvings behind him.

Then Professor Snape, softly, ever so softly, said, "Miss Parkinson, if that confounded hard headed fool, Albus Dumbledore, had held me up a second longer at the staff table with his nonsensical nattering, your dorm mate would be dead now. And _you—" _And here, his voice, that for so long had been silken, rose in an ugly crescendo, "—you, miss Parkinson, would right now be packing your bags and heading home on the first train back."

He took in for a second their stupefied faces, then continued, "I said to you on the first day that any hidden grudges you harbour towards your house mates must stay _within these walls, within this common room. _You three, evidently, did not pay attention. If something goes wrong, tell the prefects. If your dorm mate is missing, inform them. Those on the outside would have us isolated, would have us divided, would have us warring amongst ourselves; so, it is paramount that, at least on the outside, and for the sake of spiting the outside, we put up a united front. That—that, miss Parkinson, is what this house stands for, what it prides itself over. Cunning. Craft. Diplomacy. Ambition. The ability to set aside grudges and play the hand that circumstance has dealt us. Is it not so?"

He waited until Pansy, quite white, offered a jerky nod.

"Then why," he sneered, "why, _you little fool,_ did you fling an inkwell at Miss Granger in Flitwick's class? What possessed you to make such a public show out of your malice, stupid child? Never in my tenure as a teacher here has one Slytherin done that to another, and you will _ensure_ that it never happens again. Not on my watch. You will serve detention with me for a week, and I will drill that lesson into your head."

Pansy nodded again, now on the verge of tears.

"A second thing." Professor Snape turned to the other two. "And… far more…severe in implication. I understand that the wizarding world has its traditions, and that those amongst you that stand here have families that adhere to it. You have a choice as to who you consort with and who you avoid. I will not interfere. But_, _within these four walls, it is your _prerogative_ to keep those prejudices hidden.

"So, I will ask you, and you will answer me honestly: have you been calling Miss Granger certain names that are best left to the _decrepit backrooms of seedy taverns_?" He looked every bit like a slit eyed hunched bat as he said it, and the words, though quiet, were commanding and contained an unsaid threat. Hermione, who herself had been shaken by his speech and his demeanour, found herself pitying her dorm mates, pitying their petrifaction and their resigned to a grisly death faces; Professor Snape looked and sounded like he would string up and quarter the first person that admitted guilt.

They said nothing. Tracy started to sob. Pansy just defiantly stared at the ground. Daphne gripped her sleeves and bit the inside of her cheek.

Snape turned to Hermione and raised an eyebrow, as though expecting her to confirm his suspicions and implicate the girls who for two months had made her life Hell.

Hermione wanted to. She so badly wanted to. Under the heat of his withering gaze, she first wished she could shrink into the wall and fuse with it, face first, then cleared her throat and opened her mouth— to convict them, to be brave, to tell him the truth.

But she discovered then that she couldn't find the right words, that there were no right words, that she was transfixed by Pansy's pale face, the defiance there that now slowly bled away and turned into a sorrowed acceptance of whatever horrific fate she was imagined for herself, whatever state she thought her head of house, in his rage, would leave her in.

Hermione had seen that expression before. She saw it every other day in the mirror when she looked at herself.

So she held her head high, met his questioning gaze, which demanded she corroborate his assumed—actually correct— version of events, and said, pleasantly:

"Actually, they were never mean to me, Professor."

Four sets of eyes fixed on her in incredulity. Pansy was slack jawed. Hermione wished she could click a photo of that expression and frame it for the memories. She gathered her courage and continued:

"No, professor, never. In fact…I was rude to Malfoy this morning and insulted his learning. I think Pansy's reaction for that was over the top, but—but it was me that riled her up, that dismissed her skill with a wand entirely. It wasn't her fault. None of them are at fault. I'm sorry for any trouble on my behalf."

She thought she saw the shadow on Professor Snape's face lift, thought she detected a definite gleam of amusement in his eye; but by the time she blinked and looked again, it was gone, and she wasn't sure if she had imagined it instead. She could tell, however, that he did not believe her.

"Very well, then." He gave her a speculative stare and then turned and offered the other three a hard glare. "The three of you are free to leave. But, any complaint, and…" He left the threat unsaid.

They couldn't scurry off fast enough. All three avoided her eyes even as they slunk away.

When the last of their footsteps up the stairs receded, Snape said to her, "I do not take well to liars."

"Professor Snape, I—"

He held up a hand. She fell silent.

"Do not insult my intelligence, Miss Granger. I have lived at least thrice as long as you. I know when I am being lied to—and you…you are miserable at it."

She bowed her head.

"Sorry, sir." There wasn't much else to say.

"I appreciate your circumstances." He ignored the apology entirely. "This shock treatment in wizarding prejudice towards muggle-borns must be unpleasant. We do not tend to get muggle-borns here, so I can only imagine how hostile this house must be to you."

He paced up and down the room, and then with a flick of his wand put out the crackling fire in the hearth. Hermione kept quiet. Professor Snape was not done, and she did not think he appreciated being interrupted. She had seen him tear Harry Potter to shreds for it.

"But I was reliably informed," he eventually continued, "first by Flitwick, then Minerva, and then even Sprout—and she doesn't usually bother with me—that you are some prodigy; that you house within yourself such a degree of talent, that I must consider myself lucky to have someone like you _grace_ my house. Within all that was a devious, unvoiced, request— that I look out for you somehow, considering your circumstances.

"So I paid attention to your work in potions— and it was, I suppose… acceptable. You still suffered the unfortunate defect of being an insufferable hand waving know it all, but the adequacy of your ability made me overlook it. I chalked you up as somewhat talented, and the proud possessor of that precious commodity which Potter, for example, is blissfully free of—a brain.

"So imagine my surprise when you first don't come to me while being bullied, and then don't even raise a wand to defend yourself despite being a hair's breadth away from death."

"Professor, I—"

Yet again he silenced her, this time by whirling around and curtly suggesting that she speak only when spoken to. The silence that settled now between them was unsettling and oppressive, at least to her. Professor Snape kept grimacing at portraits and poking the mantelpiece; and eventually he cast tempus and looked at the time. It was half past ten. He patted his robes, and suddenly all business, brusquely continued:

"My students are usually spineless, and I am somewhat disappointed to discover that you too must be confined to those ranks. So be it. But what I will not have you do, is suffer in silence or sob out your woes in some toilet stall.

"If someone within the four confines of these walls says to you that you are a possessor of impure blood, then speak up. If these imposed ideals and ideologies grow intolerable, then speak up. If you are treated to a bastardized edition of the Dark Lord's beliefs, then don't just stand there and let them run roughshod over you; in the name of Merlin, say something.

"I know this house has its…ideals. You will face prejudice throughout your time here, and then outside, in the actual world. That is a given. I do not expect you to run to your professors every time something goes wrong. That would be redundant, and it would speak poorly about your resourcefulness. But what I will not allow, is that a student of this house play puerile Gryffindor. You will not martyr yourself over some made up cause of not snitching on your house mates. You will not, through your death, bring disgrace and dishonour to my house and my charges, as you nearly did today. To a Slytherin, self-preservation is paramount. Self-preservation through whatever means offered. So, honour that green strip that runs through your robes, silly girl, and start acting like one."

Perhaps it was the good cry she'd had, or the fading away of the adrenaline that'd coursed through her veins through the night, or even the recognition that Professor Severus Snape, in his own awkward way, was expressing that he cared for her fate— but Hermione's heart felt lighter.

"Thank you, Professor," she said with an earnest nod. "Thank you so much. For everything."

He tucked his wand into his robes and strode to the portrait. And as it swung open, he said:

"If I find that you have been this foolish again, Miss Granger, and have not consulted anyone about aid, then be rest assured: next time, I _will _have you expelled. Goodnight, Miss Granger."

And without waiting for her response, he left the common room and let her find her way back up her dorm. It was only hours after he left that it even occurred to her to wonder how he knew about the abuse, or about the things that were said to her— and by then she was too tired and too sleepy, so she chalked it up as an anomaly and left that mental, mind wrangling adventure for another time.

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**A/N:**** I've tried to do my best with Snape, but he's hard to write. Forgive any OOC moments. That being said, I'd like to point out that our canonical view of him with regard to Hermione is quite skewed, as, in canon, she's Harry's best friend, and thus automatically qualifies as name number five (after James, Sirius, Harry and Ron) on Severus Snape's shit list. There is also very little for us to go on with regard to how he treats students from his own house (preferentially, Harry tells us, but Harry is specifically thinking about Malfoy; what about non Malfoy slytherins that Snape actually supposed to mind as head of house?), and given that at least the students in his house seem to greatly admire him canonically, and given that that respect extended is probably not just due to a preferential treatment due to points, I have tried my best to approximate a Snape who is a harsh but fair disciplinarian in his dealings with internal matters relating to students from his own house. His vehemence here is because the 'mudblood' topic touches a tender nerve. I hope I've done ok. **

**As for how Snape knew, I've stooped to using a Snape who isn't above using a light legilimency probe on his students in moments of duress. **

**Please leave a review. It makes my day. Thanks for reading, and (hopefully, if you don't quit on this work) see you next time!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:**** Apologies for the near incoherent end note last time. I was exhausted. I intend to fix it soon-ish.**

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**Chapter 5**

"No, he isn't."

"He is."

"He isn't, and you're making a big mistake."

"I saw him. I saw him do it."

"Professor Severus Snape," Hermione whispered angrily, "is a teacher here, and he would _never_ do such a thing. Get that into your head, _Ronald Weasley_."

"And I'm telling you," Weasley said, still stubborn, crossing his arms and clutching in a somewhat jumpy way at one second-hand sleeve; and avoiding her eyes, as though he were intimidated by her, and rushing through his words, "I saw him do it. I saw it with my own two eyes. Harry nearly died. But o' course you defend _him. Of course_. As I expect from you all. Justice never matters to you lot. You're all already dark folk in training."

Hermione grit her teeth, and it took all her will power to not whip out her wand and turn him into a toad on the spot. Smug looking scumbag.

'I am _muggleborn_." Her fury must've shown on her face, for the two of them shifted away uncomfortably and with a creak of metal moved their chairs ever so slightly in the other direction.

Weasley ignored her and pleaded with Potter instead.

"Harry, mate, why would I lie? I saw him. I swear. He said dark things under his breath and your broom went absolutely mad. Then, just as I was going to throw something at him, you know, bang!, break his concentration or something, Dumbledore looked his way, and just like that it stopped and you swallowed—I mean, caught, the snitch. Ha! He believes me! My best friend believes me, and not you, you…you… annoying, friendless, bush-headed hag. Happy? Now leave."

It was the week before Christmas. Her housemates had gone from antagonistic to distant, ignoring her existence, even though every once in a while it very much seemed as though they wanted to come over and say a word or two; and since Hermione respected their silence, and since it meant that she, at the very least, didn't have much to cry over or even worry about, she was comfortable holding up her side of that tender accord by keeping a distance from them, both in the dorms and in class. She did so in class by taking the seat furthest from the door and thus furthest too from Draco and Daphne and Pansy and the others, who sat on the other side. This, however, had the unfortunate side effect of putting her much too close to students from other houses; and every so often it meant she'd catch snippets of conversations she wasn't meant to hear.

Her current predicament had sprung up from one such instance of unintentional eavesdropping.

It'd happened in Defence against the Dark Arts. Professor Quirrell had huffed and puffed, stuttered and sputtered, and, ultimately, like a lit candle tossed into a snow storm, watched in helpless agony as the last of his authority guttered away before his eyes: despite repeated calls for silence his class kept chattering away and ignored him, ignored him utterly. He gave up at some point and pretended to teach. Something something colony of vampires with wicked grins. Hermione pretended to take copious notes, though vampires were not in the course, though Quirrell made no sense, and though her mind was already on holiday and home and having one last conversation with Hagrid, and also somehow surmounting her inherently shy nature to shoot off to Professor Snape a Christmas gift with a thank you note.

"Slimeball, that Snape," someone behind her spat. That got her attention. "It's him, ok? It's definitely him."

She recognized that voice. It was Ron Weasley.

"I dunno, Ron. Why would he…" and that was Harry Potter. They were sitting behind her and conversing in animated whispers.

"Was limping too, innit? You said he was limping the other day. He's been behind that door, mate. He's trying something. And you seen how he looks at you? He'd eat you alive if they let him."

Hermione, by this time, had of course discerned what they were discussing. It was news throughout the school. Slytherin had played Gryffindor the evening before. Slytherin lost. But Harry Potter also nearly died in the process, only surviving by fortuitous accident. She'd been there for the game; she'd seen his broom bucking, and was reminded of her own nausea from that one time they'd had a flying lesson with Madam Hooch.

Never again.

But now it occurred to her that they were blaming and defaming Professor Severus Snape for that accident. Indignation arose within her; and, out of righteous rage, and a sense to do her saviour a good turn by promptly setting the record straight on these unfounded aspersions cast against his reputation, she turned and hissed at them, "Professor Snape's done nothing."

They'd been alarmed. Hermione alarmed herself too, what with actually talking to someone outside Hagrid and her teachers, and that too in such a tone; but now it was too late to back out.

Besides, they'd been more alarmed.

They'd clammed up and shut shop, and since Quirrell cast an eye their way she said nothing more. But she tracked them down after class and dragged them with her to the library, where, despite their sullen defiance and their initial resistance to her demands, they eventually cracked— she'd threatened to go and tell Professor Snape everything. It was an empty threat, but they didn't know that, willing as they were to think the worst of her and her head of house.

And hence this situation.

Hermione could feel a headache coming on.

"Professor Snape," she said slowly, addressing Harry; Weasley was a lost cause, "is a good man. We see him week in week out. Us Slytherins, I mean. Please, trust me on this, Harry, he isn't trying to kill you. I don't know why you don't just go and ask him— he'd clear it up in a minute; and I don't know why you think he'd do something like this… it's not as if he's a dark wizard or something; but, Harry, Professor Snape glowering at you, and deducting points, and even him failing Weasley for his last assignment—well, these…these aren't reasons. And he does all of that with everyone."

Harry just shifted around a little and looked at her in evident discomfort. This conversation was as awkward for him as for her.

"Look, could you, uh…just not, you know, tell him about this? I'd really appreciate that, Hermione. Honest. We weren't going to do anything anyway— not yet, at least. We can't really tell you why we don't trust him—"

"Cuz we don't trust you either." Hermione decided then that she hated Weasley; his set of freckles that seemed to shift like the iridescent discs of a kaleidoscope every time he spoke, and that disdainful yet nervous sideways glance he cast her way through a curtain of red as he snidely said what he did—it all so rude, so obnoxious, and it just set her off somehow.

"Ron. Please." It was Harry who tried playing peacemaker.

Weasley held up his arms in sour surrender and turned the other way. Harry coughed and, without meeting her eye, said, "Just—look, Hermione… please don't tell him, ok? Like you promised you wouldn't if we listened to what you wanted to say. We listened. Now, please let us decide. It's very nice that you came over to try and help us and all, but, please, don't tell him, and, uh, if it's not too much of an ask, please don't…er… interfere anymore."

Hermione grimaced. The whole thing was a wash. Professor Snape could look after himself anyway. He was an adult; had he not so easily taken care of her tormenters? Who was she to scurry around and try saving him? No, no it was better to send him a Christmas card and a thank you note. Perhaps a gift too, though she didn't know what he'd like…

She tried convincing herself her concern was misguided. But that still didn't entirely assuage her squirming insides.

That being said, she didn't want to spend any more time with these two. Neither seemed even remotely interested in paying heed to what she said. Oh, well. If they went after the Professor, then it'd be their problem and to their detriment.

So she stood, picked up her bag, and said, "Don't worry, I won't. I'll see you around, then."

"Thanks. See you." It was funny how they both slumped in relief. Even Weasley, though he said nothing, just seemed to take her at her word, as though it didn't even occur to him, to either of them, that she could very well just lie.

The perks of being in Gryffindor, she guessed.

She wasn't lying, though. She fully intended to uphold her end of this deal, unless there was some trouble that made it necessary that she betray their trust.

"—most annoying witch I've met," she heard Weasley mumble as she turned heel and walked away. It'd have made her cry two months ago. Now she treated it with indifference. She'd had worse.

Who cared what they recklessly did with themselves anyway? She had other, better things to look forward to. Like Christmas, and holidays, and going back home again. Not even Ronald Weasley could ruin Christmas for her, or the feeling of once more being in her mother's arms.

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**A/N:**** Before you ask, Ron Weasley is one of my favourite HP characters, so I have no intention whatsoever to bash him. I find him refreshingly realistic. He (mostly) behaves like an actual person (unlike, say, Harry, who is a good intentioned, self sacrificing cardboard cut-out with no real flaws whatsover beyond being a bit lazy) and shows things like prejudice, envy and insecurity while also reinforcing that with friendship and some degree of self sacrifice, albeit not to a comically over the top level like canon Harry. **

**That being said, I find Ron x Hermione to be a pairing that'd never work in a million years. They're just too different, too headstrong, and Ron absolutely would not be willing to adjust to suddenly discovering that his wife is a lot more successful, a lot more highly valued, and a lot more career oriented than he is. The canonical relationship is set up for a messy, teary divorce after 2-3 years (ignoring the epilogue and the non canonical monstrosity that was Cursed Child). I think they're both great characters to write about, but if I ever write em together, it's ending horribly. Thankfully, this fic isn't about that. **

**Ron can be conservative and prejudiced. This is canon. He can be extremely unpleasant to talk to if he doesn't care for you. The Hermione he interacts with here is in Slytherin, and he does not care for her. If anyone feels I've inadvertently bashed him, then apologies, because that was not the intention. **

**Thanks for reading, and do leave a review. They both motivate me to write and make my day. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Sickly sunlight splashed against and spilled off the spoke of every wheel. The train had the disappointing feel of a motionless monstrosity, an oak tree laid horizontally and crumbling of canker; it looked nothing like the slickly constructed glistering bridge to a world unknown she'd last seen. Every cushioned compartment smelt like salted pickle; every seat when touched felt like the scarred, charred jacket of a second hand book bound spirally, taped together and bought furtively off the black market. The squeaky floors, though spick and span, still seemed to intrinsically show the strain of having housed, for a few hours every four months, for thirty years straight, the soot stained boot soles of three hundred students. Was it the chill, or was it the rain, or had they maybe changed the train?

Or was it her world view that changed, Hermione wondered. She'd stepped into this world with such spring in her stride; and, as it turned out, she'd merely turned any semblance of her personality and pride into a porcelain vase and hurled against a wall of hate, traded in a way one form of crudeness and cruelty for another.

How had the varnish of her promised magical experience worn off so swiftly, and that too over the space of four months?

However, it'd happened. Somehow.

Even as she boarded the train, it felt as though a blindfold was being rudely ripped off, as though past and present were combining, intertwining; the fresh milk of excitement from then now curdled, now coagulating into tired acceptance, soured…

She shuddered then, both at that thought and at the thought too of the cracks she'd witnessed just this morning in this mechanical (magical?) construct, the train; normally silly observations were now somehow of inexplicable gravity, symbolic somehow of a passing innocence. She made those observations with slit eyes, through bellowing steam and the smattering of small islands of dispersing smog. Her brow bruised; such was the strength of the meaty swing of ham-fisted disappointment. She took in things trivial: the paint had peeled off the train's broad face and left in place of the previously divine red a dull grey and a Morse code of scratches that, at second glance, resembled too closely a system of roman numerals; the dreadful roof dripped bird droppings, drudged white goop which for centuries had symbolized the depressingly mundane.

They set off. Snowflakes swirled down the sky and added to the drab scenery a dash of white, as though some all seeing eye had taken in the throb of disillusionment that thrummed through her heart, and, in sympathy of her friendless woe, offered her now conciliatory delight by daubing the countryside's canvas in these streaks of white. She occupied this time a cramped corner seat and curled up under her chin her knees, tucked in her feet, then drummed against the wooden slats with slender fingers and hummed under her breath a song she'd heard on the radio a while ago. She was her mother's little song bird, in her snug little nest, away from the rest; this time she knew no one would come, no one would come, for there was no one she really knew, no one to look out for. The faces outside her compartment flashed by, often accompanied by the tramping of feet, and it all felt so torturous, so unnecessary. She just wished to be home as quick as she could be. Time crawled by, and so too did a trolley offering tea and pasties and chocolate toads. The lady, at least, was friendly, though she brusquely departed when Hermione said _nothing, miss; I want nothing_. Hermione understood, of course. Holiday season. Clinking coin; bustling business; no time to stand around idle and attempt conversation with socially awkward eleven-year olds.

Eventually the train ground to halt. The faces on the station, their little snippets of conversation, all of which the last time had seemed so distinct slipped away even as she stepped out, evaporated to the sky. Generic faces; indistinct voices that formed together a cloud of conversation, incessant chatter that could either be the chorus of a prayer or an avalanche of hate aimed at her. She did not care. She _did not_ care.

She stepped through the brick wall in a trance, smiling, smiling at last at the thought that she was at least temporarily free of the world of magic, happy—and she never thought she would be—that she could stow into her pocket her wand, happy that she had five minutes ago packed into her trunk her robes and would not be seeing them for at least a fortnight.

She'd been vague in her letters, but now she intended to tell her parents everything. All of it. The truth. The entire truth. How she loved magic but hated school, loved the library but loathed the drudgery of being trapped in that dorm with _those_ girls. At her lowest, most spiteful lows, she still wished she'd indicted them, told on them to Professor Snape.

But then she saw them.

Mother and father, anxiously awaiting her.

Saw them turn.

Saw father—serious father; perpetually ill, perpetually red nosed in a way that made it look, at the best of times, as though he'd glued on to the centre of his face a naughty child's boxed ear— sport all his teeth and wave; then brush off his sweater a sliver streak of fallen snow, and whilst doing so also run across his balding pate three fingers, a private tic that translated to those in the know as a confession of relief.

Saw mother step forward and draw her into a hug; smelt the scent that said family; felt in the sting of mother's sweater against her face; experienced the smooth sailing of a tear from her soul's port, the eye, down her cheeks; heard the repeated mantra of _my baby, my baby_. And the crook of that bent arm wrapped around her was suddenly a cradle; it reduced her to three; and that voice, so soft, so homely, those tense, tearful eyes, so careworn yet so consumed by love, reminded her that everything was all right, everything in the world would be all right.

Hermione realized then she had a duty. A duty to keep her parents' peace. To not trouble them with her trivial thoughts, her elsewhere unwelcome protestations. She knew, even as she saw those faces, that her parents only knew how to give, be it love or care or even an understanding ear; so, it was up to her to not take, to not ask, to not ruin their lives with the cancer of constant worry.

So, when father asked, "everything okay, dear?" Hermione said in a vibrant voice, "yes, father, oh yes! Everything's all right. It's a great school, and I made such amazing friends. I have Pansy and Daphne and Tracy and Draco, oh, and Harry and Ron; and even Hagrid, who is brilliant in a rustic way and all so gruff but such a sweetie, and Professor Snape who can be mean but so nice too, so supportive, oh yes! Oh yes! So, so supportive."

To make the lie more convincing, she said it in the way she usually said things while in the throes of a passion kindled by finding to a difficult problem a creative, satisfactory solution, or while enthralled by a new discovery and entrapped in the joy that like an ensign of victory unfurled in her heart. And though she felt horrible, the happiness that crinkled the corners of father's eyes—it broke her heart; he had been so worried that she would run once again into the same troubles, worried to the point that he had fallen ill—made the white lie worth it.

Yet, even as they left the station, she saw mother throw her way a troubled glance, saw the emergence of spots of bother that lend to her otherwise pretty countenance a muted, jaded look; and Hermione then knew that her mother could still read her like an open book, that she despite her best efforts she hadn't entirely succeeded in her ambition, and that she could expect the next day, probably in private, a set of all too awkward questions.

Such, she thought with a sigh, was life.

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** Cheers, and have a wonderful week!**


	7. Chapter 7: Severus Snape Interlude

**Chapter 7: Severus Snape Interlude**

Behind the potions lab was a dour door that when opened led down to the faded floor of an old corridor rank with the musty odour of moth-eaten mats. The torches stuck to the walls on either side had sizzled to life for his predecessor, and they would do so for his successor too, but not for him, he'd charmed it so— disdained the light, the flair, the sudden conflagrating firefly that fluttered through the air and tormented the eye. At the end of that corridor was another deep grooved door. Severus Snape sneered as he swung open that door. Christmas. Dumbledore. Christmas with Dumbledore. The three worst fates known to man, and he was to suffer through all three today: entertain in the privacy of his quarters over toast and tea that doddering fool who was somehow still as sharp as a tack. Confounded old man.

He cynically took in the crumbling cornices that like satanic sentinels crowded against the four corners of his sitting room. They hadn't been his idea: Slughorn had installed them, though it was Snape that let them fall into a state of disrepair. He'd watched with muted indifference as the gaudy decorations discoloured and turned, under the pressure of potion fumes, a rusted red, a colour all too reminiscent of _her_ hair: against the memory of her hair and the images of death it evoked, Severus Snape shut his mind.

He lived slovenly, slept spartanly. Worn textbooks were strewn across an equally worn table, the only furniture he kept, and the smell of sweat and wormwood, hellebore and acetone permeated the room, product of an experiment covertly conducted the night before. A tarred tapestry was trapped against a decaying wall; it looked like the hastily done filling of a mouldering cavity, and gaped back sullenly, almost defiantly— it was a thoughtless decoration he had installed at Dumbledore's insistence, and it had warmed his cold heart to watch the old fool's face fall— _Severus, _he had complained_, Severus, this is too drab_. At the far side was his bed room, barred from view by double door: it held a brittle cot and little else; in there he tossed and turned and at times slept, but with difficulty, always with difficulty— he seldom slept.

Severus Snape had not slept last night. Christmas brought back bitter memories, always of her, Lily— lilting laugh, limber limbs, lovely eyes he'd never see again… and yet, much to his consternation, saw every day, every single fucking day, on James Potter's face.

Harry Potter. Harry fucking Potter. Harry Potter's face had torn through the tattered cloak of his nostalgia last night too. Oh, how he hated that boy! He hated Potter; oh, hated him so! Thoughts of that boy had last night transmuted hollow, mellow memory into a mildew of hate; and wallowing both at his own fate and his wretched state, Snape had impotently emptied half a flagon of firewhisky before hurling, in incoherent fury, the rest, container included, against the book case that sat opposite the tapestry: now that reek suffused the room too, seeped through the ceiling, suffocated the starry firmament above— or so he hoped.

He'd paid his due to time, he thought, and to life, what, with teaching for twelve years for a paltry salary these fiends, these diabolically dunderheaded fiends. Yet his due to duty— to Lily— was still unpaid, and till it was so he'd have to suffer the woe of staying in the boy's vicinity, grudgingly going through the mechanized motions of his duty, his penance. The boy made it hard, though. Oh, he made it ever so hard. Harry Potter did not have the wits to see that it was Quintus Quirrell, and not he, Severus Snape, that was the problem. No surprises there. _We lack wits_ could very well be the house motto of those nitwits, Gryffindors; and Harry Potter, much like his dear departed father, doubled this folly by also being a Potter. A lack of wits was an essential element in their proud and profoundly worthless identity.

Shoved in somewhere behind that cracked bookcase he'd abused last night was a still photograph of Lily. Dumbledore had let him have it. Snape now felt like going up to it and berating it for birthing such a dunce, like brusquely bequeathing it with the sordid tale of the legacy it'd left behind; but, in some closed off crevice of his heart, he felt too, today, every day, like begging, begging whilst divesting himself of every last inch of dignity, that small still photo for benignity, mercy, forgiveness. He'd killed her. He had killed her.

What he did instead, was breathe heavily. He ignored the photo today like he'd ignored it the last ten years. Then he disrobed and entered on that winter morn the cold cone of his erratic shower.

The past was gone, yet Severus Snape only had the past to live for. He was no dreamer, but in the few fatigued moments that his cognizance slipped, past and present would intertwine, and the cruel mockery of those frightened green eyes would beckon him to furiously sift through the swift stream of time— an urchin scouring a streambed for a prized pebble that never was— for a fate that could never be, that ceased to be the minute he called Lily a mud-blood.

There was a knock on his door. He hastily dried his damp hair, and with a muttered curse and a flick of his wand conjured two cups of tea. A snap of his fingers, and some blasted elf from somewhere in the pantry ported to his room a steaming teapot and a set of pastries, the latter a disgustingly sugary once in a year indulgence that was partaken only with—

"Dumbledore," Snape said with a scowl, swinging open the door.

And indeed, it was. The garishly dressed (golden robed with a silver trim) old man offered him a pleasant smile as he swept past; he entered, then paused— and took in the shattered flagon, the overturned chairs, the sloppy spillage of firewhisky, the fumes that eddied about the room and smelt like dragon breath and gun powder.

"Redecorating, Severus?"

"Grading homework." Snape was wry. Dumbledore, to his credit, kept a straight face, though there was a twinkle in his eye; his beard, which on the best of days looked as though it'd been borrowed from a Leprechaun, quivered.

"You have pastries!" He took a chair and threw up his arms in delight. "Marvellous. Pineapple, I presume?"

"Indeed."

"Thank you, good friend. Truly."

"What flavour you find," Snape began, taking the seat opposite Dumbledore and pouring himself some tea, "to these disgustingly squelchy calorie and carbohydrate ridden monstrosities, I will never know." He looked at Dumbledore with a raised eyebrow. In response, the man reached into his robes and brought out a soiled packet. Snape shuddered in disgust. Lemondrops. Dumbledore unwrapped it and popped one into his mouth. Then he poured out tea, brought out his cutlery, cut very efficiently a slice of pastry and dunked it in tea. Then he looked straight at Snape and started to chew.

Snape's already near non existent appetite crawled into his bowels with a silent cry.

"When the next great adventure may at any time beckon, Severus," Dumbledore said, "one appreciates the simple pleasures in life."

"Oh?" Snape sneered. "Going to do us all a favour and keel over sometime soon, Headmaster?"

"I eagerly await the day," Dumbledore said earnestly. He paused a moment and adjusted his spectacles, then poured himself some more tea. "It is lamentable, Severus, that so many I meet unconsciously underestimate the grandiosity of setting sail on a new journey— and what, dear boy, is death, but the passageway to a cosmic mystery, an unending sea closed off to us till there is breath in our bosom? This world tapers off from view and we are squeezed through a diminishing gateway: the heart stops, we go under, and suddenly we see the world engrafted anew. The search for knowledge is enhanced by death— it is the ultimate form of knowledge, open to all yet embraced by few."

"Or, alternatively," Snape said dryly, "the Dark Lord is right, death is an eternal drop into nothingness, and you are a senile fool past expiry date."

"You wound me." But Dumbledore was smiling even as he said it. Then his countenance turned sombre and contemplative.

"It is nice of you to bring up Tom." His wrinkled face whitened and stretched out like wineskin; he seemed to age a decade. "What have you found?"

"That you should not have hired Quirrell," Snape said. His lip curled. They'd settled on calling the Dark Lord Tom, out of respect for his Snape's own unease at the actual name. "But you knew, didn't you? You knew when you hired him that he served—"

Dumbledore gave him a level stare. "Would you believe me, Severus, if I said I was unaware?"

Snape clutched his tea cup tight and returned that stare with a disbelieving glare. "Do not play _games_ with me, Headmaster," he hissed. "I find it hard to believe that a wizard of your calibre—"

"The Quintus Quirrell I hired," Dumbledore began, sounding tired, a far-off look in his eye as though he were reliving a memory, "was a bright young man— shy but upright, very well versed in his subject matter. I met him in June." He scooped a spoonful of sugar, tipped it into his tea and stirred. "The man I met in mid-August was duplicitous, and corrupted by the taint of dark magic. Something happened to him when he vacationed in Albania, something only he could tell you about and we could only speculate on. It was then that I suspected…" he shook his head in remorse. "I did not know, however. Not till school year started. And by then, it was too late."

"Too late to prevent a servant of the Dark Lord from being cooped in a castle filled with school children?" Snape's voice dripped sarcasm. At moments like this, he felt like taking Dumbledore by the throat and tearing out his hair, strip by strip.

"Too late to let Quirrell go without also tipping off Tom that we know about his being alive," Dumbledore corrected. "After all, he does not know that we suspect. That is an advantage to have, and it would be folly to surrender it so easily." And here was the transition from school teacher to leader of the Order. Dumbledore had fought two wars, Snape knew; while he was eager in his pursuit of education and fanatically dedicated to the well being of every student he supervised, Dumbledore had also not, at the end of the day, established his position as the sun at the centre of this small world by not being calculative or manipulative or at times even an utter bastard.

"It is a security risk," Snape insisted.

"One that I am willing to take."

"Whist I am not averse to the pleasant thought of cutting in half the student count here," Snape sneered, "even you must recognize what could happen if Quirrell feels compromised."

"I have measures in place. I will do my utmost to ensure student security."

"What about the Potter boy?" Snape was gritting his teeth now. "You risk him too. _She_ gave her life for him, but her shield only prevents the Dark Lord himself from doing the boy harm. There is nothing whatsoever to prevent Quirrell from taking matters into—"

"Which he will not do," Dumbledore said sharply. "Tom, wherever he is, and in whatever state, will not let Quirrell kill Harry. He is proud: he will accept no less than his hand being the one that does the deed. Quirrell might try enacting his own petty revenge—I imagine the crude idea of having Harry fall off that broom was his—but Harry will not die by his hand. Besides, I trust you to keep your promise and do your duty to the best of your abilities."

His tone said that that was the end of the discussion, that there would be no more argument.

Snape drew a deep breath. "Every time I approach Quirrell," the snark was gone; he was pleading now, trying to get Dumbledore to see reason, "the mark feels stronger, more unsettling, as though he… _he _is returning. You have to stop this. You have to stop _him._"

"Tom will never get the Philosophers' stone. I hope to persuade Nicholas that it is best to have it destroyed, and I imagine I will succeed in doing so by the end of the academic year. However, he is very persistent, and, much like the people we discussed prior, reluctant to part with the gift of life and embark on a new journey." Dumbledore leant back in his chair. "But I cannot stop Voldemort, Severus. He will return. It is only a question of _when_. We cannot prevent it. But while we cannot prevent it… we can try our best to put it off, preferably indefinitely."

"You speak with such certainty. You have some reason to suspect this. Some reason you have not shared with me."

"I do."

"Do you intend to let me know?"

"Perhaps eventually," Dumbledore sighed, threading through his beard a set of spindly fingers. "Someday, my boy, some other day—but not today. Knowledge can at times be a great burden, and I would rather that you function without it for now."

"Very well."

"When he does return," Dumbledore said softly, heavily, "I expect you to retake your place by his side. For Harry's sake. And hers."

Snape's mind screamed in rebellion. He was assaulted with unsavoury images. Cut-up corpse. Cruelly whispered cruciatus, that when applied seeped through the coil, cleaved through the skull and saturated with an intolerable pain the innards, the skin, the soul within; pinned with pain like a broken winged moth the fragile frame, punctured it, fractured it, fragmented it; and just as the rim of the world went dark and the pain transported you from fleshly abode to the very brim of another world, you were plunged back once again into a flaming, freezing pond of pain— conscious returned, the throb of life, touched but for an instant by the twisted fingers of death, tore against your breast once more, and you breathed and cried and silently wished you had died. And he remembered too the hollow cries of those that begged, those that indeed died, those that teary eyed threw themselves before their children and defied fate, spat in the face of an evil God— like Lily, like Lily whom he loved so…

"If you think it wise," Snape said, clearing his throat, "then it shall be so."

Dumbledore's face relaxed, a patched-up mat being smoothed out.

"Thank you, Severus. Thank you." He went back to finishing the last crumbs of his pastry. "But I must apologize. This is too distraught a conversation to have on Christmas." He conjured a napkin and wiped his mouth. "I received several presents this morning, amongst which was a set of delightfully mismatched socks, sent courtesy Harry, whom I spoke to the other day. I shall wear them every day and treasure them the rest of my life." And in that moment, he looked as if he would too. "It is perhaps indelicate to ask," he continued, "but have you perchance received anything yet, other than my present?"

"Why, yes," Snape sneered. "Severus Snape, Hogwarts's most popular professor—students attracted like flies to honey by my wry wit and my roguish charm. You are better off asking Minerva this, busybody though she be."

"Not even Lucius?" Dumbledore had the gall to sound surprised and sad. Snape hated the sympathy in his tone.

"Lucius sent me a sable cloak a decade ago with a condescending letter about the _convoluted muggle traditions _of our lot." Snape smirked. "I set it ablaze and flooed it back to him. He seems to have got the message."

Dumbledore laughed.

There was a crack; an elf materialized with a misshapen package.

"Master Severus's Snape's parcel." It dropped the package and apparated away the next instant. Snape had sort of taken into his service an elf, and though it was not bound to him it ran errands for him. Cooked for him. At times cleaned his room if he so demanded. And if an owl could not locate him— they usually could not—then the elf collected whatever was brought in and brought it to Snape.

Snape eyed the package warily.

"A Christmas present?" Dumbledore looked like a kid who had found himself in a chocolate factory.

"No," Snape said bluntly. "Probably someone trying to poison me." He picked up the parcel. It was true. That was far more likely than someone actually sending him a present. Bar that one time he had got into a short fling with a hair brained woman in a miserably futile attempt to stop moping around, and bar a few times when Lily was still alive, he had never received any presents from anyone not named Dumbledore or Mcgonagall. Not that he cared one whit, of course.

"Merry Christmas, Professor, and thanks a ton for everything," Snape read out. "Hermione Jean Granger." He paused a moment and studied the note. "It is her handwriting," he conceded at last, reluctantly, as though sullen at the very thought that someone would dare send him a present.

"If memory serves, then that is the muggle born witch in your house, is it not?" Snape did not miss the calculative glint in Dumbledore's eye; it was there only an instant, and had he not schemed with this man in the past, he might've been conned into passing it off as a trick of light.

"Indeed."

"Mistreated? Bullied?" Dumbledore's demeanour had gone from amused to grave.

"Both." Snape shook his head. "I tried handling it the best I could, but you should have re-sorted her. I pity that girl. If you are deemed the wrong sort, then Slytherin is suffering. It can at times be a house for posh little uppity pricks. You should have cited special circumstances."

"If I could, I would. But I cannot violate a six hundred-year-old tradition. You, as well as I, know that that would not fly with the board of governors. Others, with greater power, have tried in the past, and failed. What precedent would it set? What would the Daily Prophet say? It is too big a political problem, and, regrettably, despite all my authority, I cannot do much. But she seems to have risen above that inconvenience. Minerva tells me Miss Granger is prodigious in her classes and her academic performance at least is seemingly unaffected. If so, then that is admirable."

"She is talented," Snape grudgingly admitted.

"Coming from you, that is high praise." Dumbledore put down his plate and, with a click of his fingers, vanished it. "How would she compare to, say, Harry?"

The trip he had taken down the maze of memory last night assaulted him. "Your golden boy, like his father, is a headless chicken floating by on reputation alone," Snape spat. "I doubt he would demonstrate in his seventh year the promise Miss Granger shows in her first." Then, realizing his mistake, and realizing too that he had walked right into the trap Dumbledore so casually set for him, he looked down and furiously ripped open the parcel. "Box of chocolates," he snarled, now in a foul mood. "How typical."

"Could it be," Dumbledore said slowly, a scheming glint still in his eye, the gears at the back of his brain turning, "that you see in this girl another muggleborn from another time? Does she perchance remind you of Lily Evans, Severus?"

Snape looked up in shock, then almost laughed. Lily had been nothing like Hermione Granger. Lily was popular. Beautiful. Adored by all. And though there was some similarity in terms of intellect, Lily had never been sorted into Slytherin, never been abused, except by him on that fateful day that he would forever regret.

"You are mistaken, headmaster." Snape said, offering Dumbledore a small albeit genuine smile. "Actually, Miss Granger does not remind me of Lily. She reminds me of me."

* * *

**A/N: **** Sorry for the delay. I had assignments to submit.**

**This might seem like filler, but trust me it isn't. It covers the Philosophers' stone plot peripherally and is the only reference to it for the rest of this school year, as I do not intend to take Hermione's story in that direction. Her storyline runs parallel to it and is a product of it, but it isn't Philosophers' stone proper. The second thing is here is Dumbledore's character and some of the things he's talked about. They'll become a lot more relevant come year 5. I'm just setting the base for some things early. **

**I intend to do two interludes every school year (at least I have the ones till the end of year 4 planned out), one for the summer break and one for the winter one. If anyone has a problem with it, please let me know. The idea is to add other voices and other PoVs. This will happen in the work proper too, but I can't explore these things in great detail without offering em a separate chapter, which is what I do in the interludes. The one at the end of this school year will be a Draco Malfoy interlude.**

**Next up: Hermione speaks to her mother and also gets an unexpected letter.**

**Thanks for reading, thanks for the reviews last time, and please leave one this time too! It really makes my day and motivates me to write. Have a great week!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

The pink sky had gained that morning a measure of opacity. Though the sky had spent the last week looking like a sieve through which snow fell, the congregation of clouds that now shimmied across the its face, as though in sombre warning of a snowstorm, made it look like corrugated craft-paper. Stuck in the snug comfort of a nest of blankets in her radiated room, Hermione sighed mournfully: sun's radiance was a mellow memory palpitating like a dying fish in the dragnet of her mind; its benevolent rays, the central gem in nostalgia's bejewelled diadem.

She swam out of the sea of blankets she was swathed in, then sighed and snuck to her window; and as she watched the snow swirl in the sky she dully wondered why it bothered her that her mother had seen through her lie. That lie, she'd told herself, was to be her life the next seven years, and her mother had swept away that web of lie before a second strand was spun. Slytherin, the hat said. Slytherin. What self-respecting Slytherin was found out within sixty seconds of blurting out a white lie?

The firmament seemed to have blackened in response to the sudden blackening of her mood; each snow pellet that landed against her window with a sick splat seemed an adequate summary of her life. She shuddered and exhaled, and was beset by the sudden certainty that her best was behind her— life had emitted an ambrosial aura and risen to the rapture of its swansong's chorus on the night she received that letter from Hogwarts; now the notes were all out of tune; the chorus was played on cut strings and the choir croaked out each syllable through crooked teeth and a torn throat. Things would never improve, never get better, and so it would be forever and ever. She would succeed academically for seven years, but fail socially, fail miserably, fail in the worst way there was. She'd live friendless, die friendless; like an urchin outside a bakery staring longingly at sweetly scented fresh rolls, she would tread the hallowed halls of Hogwarts eyeing wistfully the small student groups that peeled away and spoke softly, bathed in the crackling flame of shared secrets, cocooned in the comfort of their own little world which was separate from the real world and sustained by the luminous light of friendship. And she was powerless too to protect her parents from this, from the sheer scope of her failure— what man, woman or child in the world went through life without a single friend?

She was abnormal. There was no other answer to it. It was Evelyn who first called her abnormal. Evelyn who said she talked funny and acted weird, and was worth no one's time. Evelyn, the muggle from the other class at the other school— they'd had only two classes per grade in her previous school.

Evelyn, though ten, was so pretty. She had a deep dimple on each cheek, and when she smiled at you, you felt as though you were special; as though Evelyn, for a minute, was entrusting you a slice of her soul, because you, and only you, were worth her time.

She never smiled at Hermione: on that fateful day she said she saved her smile only for those she considered normal, and that Hermione; Hermione, with her tangled hair, her spotted face, her awkward gait and her innate introversion; was not so, would never be so.

Evelyn had silken hair and perfect teeth and looked to all the world as though she were aristocracy, special as could be. From the girls Hermione had seen in Hogwarts, only Daphne Greengrass surpassed her in appearance; and Daphne was too frigid, lacked the charm, the hospitability, the carefree cheer…

Hermione hated Evelyn.

Hermione hated Evelyn because she wanted to be Evelyn, and never could be.

Evelyn, Hermione was sure, would've had half of Hogwarts eating out of her palm. She would've made Ron Weasley go cross eyed and slack jawed, and she would've been best friends with Harry Potter.

And that thrice damned hat wouldn't have sent her to Slytherin.

There was a knock at the door.

"Yes, mum, I'm here." She turned away from the window and stalked back to her bed.

Mother looked tired in the dun daylight— she hadn't slept well. Hermione had inherited her hair, and, as her father often jovially said, her brains too; but not much else, not the things that truly mattered: the effortless ease of gait; the iron will that brought with it a strong sense of self-worth; the smile, which was the silver glimmer of a lighthouse beacon— on days when Hermione felt she did not matter, it said, in shining, that she did, and led her through the tumultuous sea of her misery to a secret island suffused in cheer. They were similar in some ways and yet so different, as distant in some things as the years that set them apart.

Mother did not say a word. She just ghosted to her bedside and sat beside her, brown eyes besmirched by the clod of worry. There was a tension; it ran like a tremor through the shadows that stalked the circular room's rim, and as the shadows spread she seemed to be watching in real time the shrinkage of her world, its consumption by this carnivorous shade that would not stop till it had tasted with its tongue the texture of her bleached bones.

Hermione was weary of the entire farce.

"It's the same, ok? Exactly the same. Nothing's changed." She snuck a peek and saw her mother's face erode into a river of sympathy. Hermione was drawn into a hug; the drawbridge to that fortified fortress of joy illimited, a mother's love, had been let down for her, and in the comfort of those strong arms she was beset by a sense that the shadow of some great grief had passed.

"Is it about your academic inclinations again?"

_No. It's about my blood, and about the fact that the two of you mean even less to them than I do. _

"Yes," Hermione said. "Yes, it is."

"Then I'll write to your headmaster," mother promised, drawing away. She looked almost relieved, as though she'd expected much worse.

"It won't help. It never does."

"We spoke about this last time too, sweetie. If I don't—"

"He can't do anything, mum!" she stamped her foot against the bed in agitation. "The one at the last school did nothing either, because she couldn't. And professor Dumbledore can't either."

_And he won't listen to you. If muggleborns are second class citizens there, then muggles are at best irrelevant and at worst a blemish to be vacuumed away. I won't let them hurt you even if they hurt me; I want to protect you from that pain mother— please let me, please, please. _

"Things are better now," Hermione continued. "They truly are. A professor helped me. Professor Snape. He's my head of house, and he really looks out for all of us."

"If_—_" her mother hesitated a moment, then swallowed and continued, "if you're unhappy there, we could..we could talk to these people and request them, you know, that...that you be allowed to return here. We could withdraw you_—"_

"Mum!" While home was an ideal retreat, and while she hated being treated as though she did not exist, _this _thought had never crossed her mind.

Her mother sighed.

"We miss you," she said sadly. "Your father and I never intended for you to be sent to a boarding school."

"I miss you too. Both of you. But I honestly enjoy what I study; it means the world to me, and I'm really good at it. I just wish…" Hermione looked away, a wan flush dusting her cheeks, "I wish more people would talk to me."

Further inquest into this was delayed by a tapping at the window, accompanied by a fervent flutter of wings. An owl. A tawny brown adult owl with splashes of silken white across its spread wings. Tied to its foot was a letter. It flew in, then extended that appendage to Hermione with a dignified hoot.

She took the letter and read it, and slowly, ever so slowly, the bafflement on her face morphed into a beatific grin.

"What happened?" mother asked. Without a word, Hermione offered her the letter. Her mother took it and read aloud:

_Hermione,_

_I have thought a lot about this, and now I find that I am unable to let it go till put my conscience at ease over it. So I write you this letter to clarify. I always felt uncomfortable about how you were treated; I felt that way even before Professor Snape shouted at us the other night. I just could never bring myself to say so. But after he said what he did, I felt even worse. I tried approaching you twice at school, once in our dorm and once in the common room, to tell you that my behaviour had been wanting, but I suppose I lacked courage, as I lost my nerve on both occasions. So I'll say it to you now, in this letter: I am truly sorry for cold shouldering you throughout the school year, and am equally sorry that I must continue to keep my distance—as a pureblood in Slytherin, and as heiress to my own house, I have a certain station to aspire to, and certain actions are seen as beneath that. Given how prodigious you are, and how much you read, I am sure this is something you know too; you must be aware by now of some of our inviolable traditions._

_I offer you, however, as a token of apology, a present for your muggle festival: Christening, I think? The owl I have sent your way is named Apollo, and he is a magical rarity bred selectively and accessible only to a few. He cost me five hundred galleons. I now give him to you as a gift, and ask for nothing whatsoever in return, except that you forgive me, and that we agree to no longer mention any role I might have played in the past in adding to your torment. _

_Please do not respond to this letter, except in person: my parents would not appreciate my being in touch with a muggle-born. And even in person, please do not respond unless we are in private, as I have certain appearances to maintain._

_Have a happy Christening, _

_Yours sincerely, _

_Daphne Greengrass_

_Heiress, Ancient and Noble House Greengrass._

"Can we keep the owl?" Hermione asked, a note of plea entering her voice. "Please?"

"I_—" _Her mother seemed lost for words. "Never in my life have I seen something so... condescending. Send this back to her with a thanks, but no thanks. Tell her you don't need her gift. She talks of you as though you were an animal to be placated, not a living, breathing human being of value."

Hermione felt the need to defend this newfound acquaintance. Daphne was not like the others; Daphne, after all, had apologized. And in that moment she understood her mother, as a muggle, would never understand the kind of courage it must've taken Daphne to simply sneak to the owlery at her home and swiftly scribble something like this; though the apology was half hearted and conditional, she'd gone against her family and her tradition in a way that not even Hermione would dream of doing if she were in her position. To invite such social censure just to placate a worthless muggle-born…

She'd convince her mother to let her keep the owl, and she'd carry the owl everywhere as a symbol of her own gratitude for this olive branch extended. Daphne would be her first friend, even if she refused to accept it, and despite the request that Hermione avoid her she'd try her best to make friends with her. Oh she would! And she'd buy her something nice too, as a thank you present, though the letter said that Daphne wanted nothing in return.

And while Mum wouldn't understand, she would eventually fold and let Hermione do what she wanted_—_she loved her too much.

Life was looking up.

* * *

**A/N:**** You have to keep in mind that Hermione is still a child. Hence the sudden tonal shifts, from when she initially, moodily ponders her life (admittedly in an over the top way, but in my experience when you are suffering from something, even if it be social seclusion, then that feels like the most important and the most painful thing in the world, and you have a feeling that things will never get better; in other words, we live in the moment, be it pain or pleasure, and I am loathe to trivialize that) to her suddenly, sunnily clutching at the straws of a potential camaraderie she perceives to be offered in this letter. As a writer, I do not tend to make comments on whether or not something is right or wrong: I just show two conflicting responses to an event, as with Hermione and her mother here over Daphne's letter, and it is left to the reader to decide which one is the right response, or which is closer to the truth. I believe a eleven year old without friends would be desperate to make one, even if it comes at a significant dilution of dignity, while her mother, who is older, wiser, and more experienced, would naturally perceive it differently, albeit she does so from a place of ignorance: she, after all, has no idea of what the wizarding world is like. I try to refrain from moral commentary; I just want to show separate povs, and you as a reader are free to draw whatever conclusion you wish to.**

**On Daphne calling Christmas Christening, I've always found it somewhat hard to accept that purebloods are even aware of wtf Christmas is. This is me rectifying that.**

**Thanks for reading, and please leave review! (didn't receive many for the last one, ngl). And have a wonderful week! **


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

Even two months after her act of charity, Daphne Greengrass could not quite pinpoint with certainty the root cause behind it. The truth was, her confused, clutched-quill scratchings against that yellowed page, so like a dead leaf, did not signal a seismic shift into some new world where mild natured magnanimity had lit an incense of goodwill and thus flooded the air with the fragrance of forgiveness.

Far from it.

That letter had been written in defiance, or so she thought. When father had with a meaty fist bloodied mother again; and when Astoria, dear Astoria, diseased, crying, dying, had screamed; and father, in response, had upturned the upholstery and flung at Stori a table stool—smote and shattered to smithereens by mother's spell, for which, of course, she suffered more, felt again in her mouth the swell of fresh blood, the smell of a silver ring that smashed into her eye; and when, after all that muddle, father stormed off and mother called her and Stori close for a cuddle, and then sobbed and dosed herself to near death on the drugs Daphne got for her the other day; well, Daphne had been a little…upset and kind of…annoyed. In her annoyance, she had allowed her better judgment to be clouded by the chaos around her, and desultorily settled on setting herself the ambition to defy, and to defy in such a way that the splendour of her surname would be blighted— blighted the worst way there was.

And thus the letter to Hermione Granger.

She had, of course, regretted it immediately, and though she'd said sorry, she wasn't— not really, maybe not at all. But it was beyond her to explain with tact that fact to _this_ girl, who had no understanding of social convention, and now trailed after her: stuck to her like a shadow, showered her with crass niceties, pretended, ineptly, that she did not mind how she was treated. Hermione Granger earnestly offered to help her with homework; Hermione Granger had once even suggested that she'd do her homework for her.

Daphne wasn't particularly offended by that offer, but if there was one thing she'd learnt from eleven years of being the first fruit borne of a dysfunctional marriage, it was this: to be weak was to be exploited; it made you worse than the worst criminal there was, because by being weak you invited crime—you invited the raised fist, let it bloody you, bore its blows with shut mouth, burnt from memory the bridge to retaliation.

Hermione Granger, like her mother, was weak, and would remain that way the rest of her life. Hermione Granger, unlike her mother, was baseborn, and no disguise in the world could successfully hide in their world the reek of _that_ sin. Her mother at least had some prestige in pureblood society, and no one commented on her several: _I fell from the stairs again; I'm so clumsy, ha-ha, don't know how Cygnus tolerates me._ Granger would never even have that. To be seen with her was social death, and Daphne, above all else, thought of herself as someone who avoided the stigma of the socially inept and solicited instead the socially adept, so as to derive from the sheen of their success some reflected light. She would not make her mother's mistakes: she would not marry for love; she would not cause her kin shame; and she would not offer some scum a pathway to the Greengrass name, or even associate with the weak and thus ruin her chances at acquainting the strong, the savvy, the wealthy.

But Hermione Granger was also a walking library. She was frighteningly talented, and truth be told, Daphne did not mind her, would probably have been best friends with her if it were not for the blight of her blood. There was just something very amusing about the way the girl so desolately stared at you, upper lip quivering, and perked up at the slightest hint of a compliment, as though she would live or die by Daphne's decision to make out of her a friend. It reminded Daphne a little of the boarhound she'd had for pet at five—father had come home drunk one day and snapped his neck in two.

How she hated that drunken lecher! But perhaps she hated her mother just as much; that woman abandoned all semblance of self-respect and went back crawling into the fiend's arms every time he returned with a supposedly sincere apology. When Daphne once questioned her mother about why she stayed, she'd only said, with unseeing eyes, _he's your father, Daphne_;as though that explained everything, as though she ought to consider Cygnus Greengrass, who had tried drowning her at six in a drunken attempt to _bring back the Dark Lord, love!, _her father. But, as her grandmother's ghost had morosely told her when she was deemed old enough to understand, her mother, in her youth, had foolishly written over all her property to Cygnus, so in love was she; and was thus trapped, making out of herself a voluntary sacrifice for the sake of her daughters, so that they at least be allowed to partake in a share of that rapidly dwindling wealth: mother maybe thought herself to be a songbird plaintively sighing its plaints to the fell night, her breast pressed against a tangle of thorns, the last beats of her life making bloom a red, red rose.

She held the foolish woman in utter contempt. They had once been very rich, and were now slowly subject, by that swinish swindler, her father, to the social decay of falling into utter mediocrity. They would be destitute by the time she turned seventeen. Fade into oblivion. There would not be a galleon left, and then all that remained would be her pristine beauty and the prestige of her pureblood name, which her father of course would auction off to the highest bidder…

Stori had given her hope. Stori had made her love. Stori, with her innocence, had for a few years been her umbrella against the simmering sky of her own mind that threatened a rain of resentment.

Stori had come down with an incurable illness that would someday kill her. She hated Astoria for it, hated her, hated her as she once loved her, though she did not show it: she'd left Daphne all alone to figure her way out of all this, this mire that the two of them were trapped in, the mere mention of which would probably kill her little sister.

"Um, Daphne?"

And there was the other headache.

They were seated in the library. It was nine thirty. Time to pack up, time to go back to the dorm, and pretend, as was the norm, that they did not know each other. Though that perhaps was an exaggeration. Everyone knew she was spending time these days with the _mudblood_. She'd seen Draco give her odd looks the other day, and she was sure he'd someday soon approach her and advise her to stay away from Granger, lest her good name be ruined.

And she'd do so too. But the thing was, she'd fail transfiguration if she did so. To say she sucked at it was an understatement. And since this was Slytherin, and since nothing was free, a trivial time commitment to the attention starved Hermione (along with the owl she'd gifted her on an impulse, which she was coming to regret; five hundred galleons was a lot of money) was the best deal she could hope for. Besides, her company, though socially undesirable, had a propensity to be intellectually stimulating.

"Yes, Hermione."

"I was thinking—"

"Aren't you always?"

The girl coloured at what she perceived to be a compliment. Pathetic, but also somewhat pleasing. Daphne wasn't used to people actually paying heed to anything she said, or indeed affording her such importance. When it came to social status, both Blaise and Draco outstripped her, as did Parkinson, whom she almost on principle disliked—the girl subtly mocked her mother, smugly secure in the knowledge that Daphne would bow to her superiority in status and treat her barbs with a stony indifference. Tracy, Tracy was her friend, but Tracy was also vacuous in the worst way, and at times vapid. And ever so insecure, more so than Granger, yet ever so unwilling to accept her insecurity or even subjugate herself to her betters— unlike Granger, who with bowed head and the inbred weakness of her kind meekly supplicated on one knee, figuratively, for the mercy of Daphne's mere acquaintance, which Daphne had on a whim granted her.

"I won't be returning to the dorm with you."

For the love of…

Daphne let out a long-suffering sigh, then closed her books, crossed her arms, and asked:

"Why?"

Hermione hesitated, and several years afterwards Daphne Greengrass would wonder if it would've inextricably altered their destinies if she had, at that moment, stood up and walked off. The thought had crossed her mind. She'd been frustrated after her trip down memory lane, had been on the verge of doing just that, and the words to tell Hermione Granger precisely what she thought of their pretend play and such drawn out theatrics had been at the tip of her tongue. But she didn't say what she intended to; didn't stand up and walk off; preferred instead to suffer through silence in silence, the self-important tapping of her heel against the table's leg striking the only note of impatience.

"I—" Hermione lowered her eyes and wrung her hands. Her lips quivered. "It's about Hagrid."

Ah. The half giant. How typical. The whole school had heard by now what'd happened to him the morning before, and though she knew of Hermione's acquaintance with that second-rate scum, Daphne did not think she'd be so affected.

"Well, what about him?"

"They took him away," Hermione blurted out. She looked near tears. "I saw it at all. I went to his hut last morning and he was so distraught and they said he couldn't take care of the unicorns and since he failed to fulfil his duty as gatekeeper under the magical animal protection act they are duty bound to take him into custody for questioning, and—and he could be in Azkaban right now, and he could lose his job, and—"

"And why," Daphne asked, an edge to her voice, "does all that matter to you?"

"Because he's my friend!" Hermione looked shocked she'd even have to ask.

Typical. Just typical. It was her luck that she ended up stuck with these sorts of people, that the constant company of those of a higher station evaded her.

"Okay," Daphne said. "Okay. Let's clear up a couple of things, all right? First, your…_friend_ is not going to Azkaban. They detained him for questioning because that's the law— he's not having his fingers pulled out, and he's not Dementor food. He _might _lose his job, but that too is unlikely, given he is Dumbledore's pet. So he'll likely return in a few days. Second, don't let anyone in Slytherin hear you call that oaf your friend. Third, what do you intend to do, and how is this even tangentially tied to you not returning to the common room?"

And then a truly terrible thought crossed her mind.

"No," Daphne said flatly. "Absolutely not."

And Hermione, perhaps seeing the light of understanding dawn on her visage, said, "But I have to! It's Hagrid, and though it's nice of you to try and reassure me—"

"You are _not_ going into the forbidden forest at this hour to investigate whatever in Morigana's name is murdering unicorns. Get that into your skull, Granger." Whatever semblance of politeness she'd had in her voice before dissolved into dust at the truly terrible thought of Hermione going, Hermione dying, and Snape like a bat swooping down on Daphne, expelling her entrails, and breathing against the ear of her rent corpse the foul words: _you, Miss Greengrass, are expelled. _

"I don't have to…go alone. Was hoping you'd come along," Hermione was meek, and refused to meet her eyes.

"And why," Daphne asked, struggling to keep her voice level, "would _I _do that?"

There was a moment's pause. The girl's face cycled through a palette of conflicting emotions.

"I know you said stay away," Hermione said softly, eventually, still not meeting her eyes, "and for the first week I did. But then I was lonely, and you didn't send me away when I…it's been two months now, and you let me talk to you, and you…you don't treat me like trash." She raised her eyes, and they were both hesitant and hopeful.

"Daphne," she said, "Daphne—we're friends now, aren't we? And isn't this what friends do? Please?"

For fuck's sake.

"Look," Daphne said, standing up, suddenly losing her temper, feeling as though she had been taken for a ride, furious that her token acquaintance had been mistaken for a solemn oath to some secret sort of kinship where they would at all costs look out for each other; "you look here, Granger. You and I—we're not friends, and we never will be. You teach me transfiguration because you are a fucking loser no one will talk to—and just because I offered you Apollo doesn't mean I'll follow you at midnight into certain death. There are certain traditions. Certain conventions we adhere to. And you don't understand them because you are a _mudblood_. Go. Get lost. Do whatever you want to. Die in a fucking ditch, for all I care."

And without so much as a second glance she stormed out of the library and made her way to the common room.

She quelled all guilt the first fifteen minutes and congratulated herself for doing so. But half an hour later she heard outside the sound of heavy rain. And Hermione still hadn't returned to the dorm. And then Daphne felt the first stirrings of guilt. These intensified over the next fifteen minutes, and though she tried sleeping, though she twisted and turned in her bed, she couldn't shut out of her head various images of Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger actually dead, dead due to what she, Daphne, had said to her.

Snape would kill her. Snape would actually kill her.

Cursing, she kicked off her blanket, ignored the soft snores from the bunk across, and wound around her slender frame a shawl. Then she stepped out of her dorm and slunk to the library, which was shut, and which, after a thorough search, showed no evidence of still having within its confines one Hermione Granger.

Daphne hesitated a minute, then hung her head in defeat and started to make her way to Severus Snape's office, hoping against hope he'd still be there, morosely muttering under her breath the mantra of "stupid mudblood. Stupid, stupid mudblood."

* * *

**A/N:**** With regard to having a 11 year old pureblood use the word 'fuck' twice, this is something I considered a long time and eventually decided to go with. I think it helps show both her impulsiveness (her assessment of herself as cold blooded and calculating is adorably off, for one) and the violent circumstances she grew up in. I believe she'd hear that and worse on a daily basis, and when off kilter might actually use it, if only to sound kinda serious, I guess?**

**Which brings me to another point: believe any assessments these kids (and other characters) make about themselves, specifically in Pov, at your own discretion. They may or may not be true. I've noticed that we as a species tend to be significantly prejudiced when it comes to how we see ourselves. **

**I made up Daphne's history. I also made up the law with which Hagrid was detained. The unicorn deaths are canon. **

**I think Philosophers' stone should be done in the next 3 or so chapters. **

**Thanks for reading, and have a great week! **


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

A melting bridge of snow caused a ford to flee the confines of its bank, and Hermione, skin suffused with an odour earthen and rank, step by step negotiated this overflow, stricken face a tourniquet threaded together with strands of grief. Her boots were soaked, her skirts stained, and she felt as though she'd forever be unclean. Then the clap of thunder, the crack of a branch above, and the wind with wimpled wing whooshed past, a falcon stalking prey; and in the dour dark that'd swallowed day she, Hermione, was a worm writhing in the congealed clod of her blood, so like mud, so like the mud around her.

Put one foot after the other, she said; one foot after the other, and that's all. Hagrid needs me; Hagrid needs me badly, and though Daphne said he'd be ok, she's lied to me once and there's nothing stopping her from doing so again.

She cleared the ford, though not unscathed. Now in her imaginings she was a sediment carrying beast of myth— stench trailed behind like a gown's train, mucus swelled vein to vein, murk coursed through the brain like a river in a muddied plain. And that's all she was, really: a clayey construct for cruel children to mould or muck up; or, better still, a bucktoothed big foot, tailored in a suit of twigs and thorns, the former like horns protruding from her hair.

Tree roots, undead appendages, tore through the earth's bowels and grabbed at her as she gangled; then a vine that at leg height dangled clipped her careless leg, and down she went in a tangle, tumbling face first into a thicket.

She rose. Felt against her fingers the texture of the tree bark next to her. Mud in her mouth. The tang of blood...

Breathe in. Breathe out. Don't hyperventilate. Slip-slide through the muddy trail like a skidding motor vehicle— someone lost control of the steering wheel. Hysterical. Utterly hysterical. Which way was home, again?

Fortune was not in her favour, it seemed, and never would be. How was she to trace her way through this labyrinth of leaves and shoots and roots? There was nothing here, and no one, and the rain made it ever so hard to see, though she had for company the wavering light of her wand.

Raindrops rinsed her face, a scrub from heaven sent her way. A misstep, and the loamy soil sucked in her foot; with a sigh and a strangled sob she reached down and freed herself— then froze as she spotted through the descending patter of rain a faded silver stain.

Unicorn blood. Notoriously sticky and ever so hard to cleanse. She looked around, and to her right ran a faint trail in a spatter of silver, a shiver streaking through the sighing earth's bosom. It ran under arches of vine and bine and disappeared into darkness. She directed her wand that way. The song of some magical bird rose in mournful score and soared through the sky.

She skipped forward, then stumbled again and sank deeper this time into the slime. Then rose and coughed up a crust of mud, resolve a castle of quicklime crumbling before the catapulted rocks of reality; and she wished, wished with all her heart, that she'd stayed home: that she were not at Hogwarts, not in the heart of this heaving forest, not, as it were, traipsing off to the middle of nowhere. But Hagrid needed her. Hagrid needed her, and since someone somewhere did, since she could at least in that manner make herself useful, it behoved her to go on.

Fingers nails the colour of rust. Gasping. Grasping blindly in the dark at the bits of bark that every five steps presented themselves— dyed incarnadine, curved like the incurved spines of eldritch horrors, surface a sizzling pot that thrummed on touch, thrummed with the potent hum of magic...

A clearing. Everything was quite quiet and quite still. The clotted blood that had first shown itself an incision in the earth had grown into a gash. Trembling wand that more than once from slippery hand skittered away, with first a clitter then a clatter— an urchin with impish grin fleeing the feeble hearted din of remonstration made by a substitute school teacher.

The storm retreated. A sudden spillage of moonlight. There was some sound. Some sound in the distance. A mellifluous moan that nonetheless portended death, the passing of all things true and of value.

Emboweled in a queasiness that like quicksand ensnared her guttering guts; entombed for a moment in a closeted cell of cowardice's eternal empire. The icy grasp of fear froze for a second her heart's fire.

But no. No, she had come so far, and though already utterly lost it would not do for her to lose this night the last of that virtue which made her Hermione Granger: indomitable will, the swill of courage that like ambrosial nectar stained the soft lips of her spirit.

She would not quit. Not now. Not this near her goal.

Past a covert, then, and past a glade. Past a closely wound path that from the copse of trees sprung serpentine—the conspiring trees closed in quickly, formed a cove, swallowed up all light, cut off from sight with bent branches the wan moon and dripped instead the residue of skies overcast, a storm overpast.

Light dying. Sight dying. Breath a yarn of hoarfrost heavily exhaled. Another glade. She'd misplaced somewhere in the murk a shoe, and now blade by blade, thorn by thorn, she limped through this bier of nails, a paynim proving through pain her purity of heart.

Scarred stumps. Charred clearing. The heart of this forest a house ransacked. The corpse of a unicorn wreathed with the bulk of death's coverlet, above which a dark figure breathed, ingested in slow sips the fluid that spilled out of the split seam of the beast's breast.

It heard her and looked up.

Panic. Panic that like a hollow reed blown trilled through her heart an arrhythmic tone. Arms turned to water, knees to wet wipes. It raised a hand. Raised a wand.

Fly. Fly now, or die.

A flash of green splashed against a hewn tree trunk behind and the bark burst into a shower of splinters. A shock of pain: some splinters sunk through skin, and thus in the language of suffering conversed with the spirit within, rousing it. Fly or die. Yet there was nowhere to fly; that lank form seemed to stride by stride swim through air, and the space around them like a dissolving dream fell away. Die, then. She saw in the flash of that red eye her death foretold.

In these perceived last moments, it was professor Snape's visage with its customary sneer and professor Snape's voice with its customary suavity that swam to mind. How he chastened her last time, after the troll; how he professed a disappointment in her ability to raise her wand to defend herself.

The form was nearly upon her, and from this close she could tell it was no faceless monstrosity, but a man, a man like any other.

And if he was a man, then he too like her could die.

He raised his wand his wand again.

And with set lip, and secure in the knowledge that the worst that this could end in was her death, Hermione Granger raised hers, blasting curse, a fourth-year spell, the best she could under the circumstances cast her mind to and muster the strength for, at the tip of her tongue.

And then this impasse was interrupted by an acerbic voice that was nonetheless music to her ears.

"I warned you once," it bit out caustically, "and you said to me that I am mistaken. Yet here I find you now, trying to murder a first year, as is to be expected from someone of your station."

Professor Snape stepped into the clearing, wand drawn; and though he looked somewhat winded, perhaps from having run the entire distance, he, nevertheless, unlike Hermione herself, did not look as though he'd been put through a shredder. There was not a speck of dust on his robes.

"I let you live the last time because Dumbledore would not let me do anything to you, you coward." Snape's face twisted into a snarl. "There's no Dumbledore here now, and unlike that soft-hearted fool I do not easily forgive scum like you, who cast themselves into the service of the Dark Lord despite his power having broken, and despite him, like a Wight, having waned." A careless flick of his wand, and Hermione found herself pushed into the tree behind her, a shield springing up between her and the form.

The form with a huff had started to undo his cowl, and now shards of light pierced the prominent features of a familiar face; a face she never in a million years would have foreseen finding in such a situation.

Snape stepped forward.

"This ends tonight," he said. "Tonight, you die by my hand, Quintus Quirrell."

And Professor Quirrell, red eyed, streaks of silver streaming down his chin, just offered him a grotesque grin, which seemed to wryly say that his soul housed within, as equal compeers, insanity and inhumanity.

"We shall see, _Severus, _shan't we?" was all he said. "We shall see."

* * *

**A/N:**** I have admittedly taken liberties with inducing the fight response in an introverted eleven year old confronted with death. It arguably flies in the face of realism. I ask you to indulge me on this, as I simply got tired of writing Hermione as a mute sufferer who lets things be done to her. So I'd argue that that action was at least somewhat symbolic: a discovery of a spine, if you will. Might not manifest much all too often over the next school year, but it eventually does. Bear with me here. **

**I did not, however, go as far as showing an actual fight between a Voldemort possessed death eater, with years of experience in the dark arts, against a talented first year. The truth is, Quirrell would paste Hermione on the wall in under thirty seconds, and that's not her fault or down to a lack of talent. The gap in experience and skill is too much.**

**The lack of a response to what Daphne said last chapter was based more on my own experience with how such things work: if you distract yourself with something important, then the shock of any bad news can be put off for a few hours, I've discovered (came to that conclusion after by grandfather's death, but you get the idea). The gravity of what was said will eventually hit her. Her response might not really be drastic, though.**

**Updates are slower now due to my semester exams nearing. I hope to be done with year one in two more chapters, and time permitting I'd like to get that done over the next couple of weeks. It might be a little hard, though.**

**Thanks for reading, and please leave a review! **


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"You do not frighten me." Snape raised his wand. "It speaks much of your ability, that you thought you could throw us all off with a stutter."

"And it speaks much of yours, Severus," said Professor Quirrell, his face fermenting into an expression of such malice that Professor Snape, though confident, took a step back; "that you could not discern with adequacy what gifts the dark Lord has bestowed upon me, or how far— oh, quite how far!— I'd go in his service."

"Your fool's errand—" Snape began, but Quirrell, with a high-pitched laugh, that by its final note deformed into a warble, cut him off.

"Mine, Severus? _My fool's errand_? I am merely the vessel, you fool— you fool, utter, utter fool! You know nothing, understand nothing—I..." his voice began to quiver, as though he were experiencing at that moment both pain and rapture. "I am merely, yes! merely an instrument, to be moulded— moulded by my Lord, and to him I have dedicated my being, and for him I am transmuted today from mortal to...to..." He clutched his head and cried in such terror, as though the very insides of every blood vessel in his brain were being scooped out with a spoon; then in a voice nothing like his own, a voice that with a sibilant sigh broke into a peal of laughter, he said, "_we, Severus, we are now eternal._"

And Severus Snape spied the unicorn. And Severus Snape paled, something suddenly clicking; then, with muted curse, he tumbled towards her, Hermione; and he too was now undignified, and his pallid face too was as panic stricken as her palpitating heart.

He grabbed her with one hand and pushed her behind him, shield fading away.

"My lord," he murmured, avoiding eye contact, attempting, and aborting midway, a bow; "my Lord, I—"

"Come, come, Severus." The voice was silky. Serpentine. As was the face struggling to free itself from the protective membrane of Quirrell's skull; it seemed to a horrified Hermione some sort of parasitic possession. "After ten long years, you meet the very master you once proclaimed dead, the very one whose name you defiled moments ago, and yet," his voice dropped to a whisper; he sounded almost mournful, though Hermione detected in his hiss a hint of mockery; "yet, you do not offer me, as mollification, the token courtesy of a bow."

Snape, without comment, without emotion, sank to his knees and pulled her down with him.

"Better." The thing that was once Quirrell idly unwrapped with one hand its turban, and with the other it twiddled its wand. "Much better. So, what is it you were saying, my traitorous servant? Fool's errand, was it? That Quintus Quirrell would at great personal cost endeavour to bring me the Philosopher's stone, that he alone, out of all the treasonous adders I fostered at my bosom, would do so... seek me out when I lay broken in Albania, robbed of every last vestige that made me more than a man—this to you seems like a fool's errand?"

And in a moment of sudden clarity, Hermione Granger had an epiphany. She knew who this was: He who must not be named; and he, like a bulbous tumour, was sprouting from the back of her erstwhile professor's brain. And Professor Snape was frightened. Professor Snape was bowing this thing— this thing that at one time was a harbinger of death for every muggle and muggleborn.

Fear drove through her gut a frigid fist.

"My Lord...I mistakenly believed that he wanted it for himself. If I had known—"

"Crucio."

To watch her professor shake; to watch him trash around screaming; to watch, even as he grabbed with his free hand the grass underneath, yet did not let go of her shoulder, as though if he were to do so she would disappear, and he would too: it did not sit well with her. She felt the edges of her eyes blur, yet, she could not— no, would not— speak, for fear that she would be next; and there was something in her professor's desperate grip, some message in his rheumy eye, that even through his pain reassured her she'd be ok...

The Dark Lord lifted his wand and broke the spell.

"Severus," he said softly, "Severus, my servant, not a minute has passed since you said to me, then wreathed in a false sense of security, that you held in great contempt those that did not defy my memory— for what man fears a shade? Yet here you are, grovelling, gnashing your teeth and gripping the ground, denying that, which you of your volition said— all for a fear of being dead, a fear of Lord Voldemort, who always knows..."

Her heart sank. Professor Snape? A servant to Lord Voldemort? There was a heaviness in her head and her body, as though all this were a dreadful dream she'd never wake from.

Then the monster's eyes flitted to her face, and as she scrambled back in terror his lips curled.

"My Lord," Snape gasped. "My Lord, I was and still am your loyal spy. I stayed—" he wheezed. "I stayed at this castle by your order, to do your bidding. To spy on the order, on Dumbledore. It was never my intent to cross you, and I never—"

He coughed up blood.

The expression on her erstwhile professor's face was merely one of amusement. There was not a shred of sympathy there, and he seemed to contemplate for an instant the prospect of putting professor Snape under cruciatus again.

She could not let that happen. She would not let that happen. If nothing else, she owed the man a favour; and though she knew it was a lost cause, when the thing took its eye off her and raised its wand again, she took advantage, and she raised hers—and much to her surprise found herself able to get off a spell.

It missed by a yard and crashed into the foliage behind.

Pain. A tremendous pain that set ablaze every vein, and she was dully aware of herself screaming, of her bowels emptying, such being the agony, and of the thing telling her professor something, something as he got in front of her and begged, begged for her life.

Her ears were ringing. The back of her nose had a slippery coppery feel. And that thing, that thing now speaking in a reverberating echo, said:

"Swear to me again an oath of fealty, Severus. Bring me the stone. But, before that, prove to me your loyalty. Kill the girl."

And through slit eyes that gushed blood, she looked up, saw her professor, white faced, say that he couldn't, that if he did so Dumbledore would sack him, and the Dark Lord would thus lose a spy. Yet, that high cold voice did not care, and said it was either her or he, and demanded, in demented pitch, and with an inhuman visage inflamed with amused rancour, that he do it.

Professor Snape turned to her. His face was set, yet entirely resigned. And she suddenly knew what he would do, knew that the dark lord had won after all. And in these last moments she felt compelled, not to pity herself, but to comfort him, to tell him that it'd all be all right, and that in saving her once he'd done more for her than most would, than most ever had. But her bleeding mouth betrayed her, and all she could emit through tears was a choked moan.

He raised his wand.

A flash of light.

The world went dark.

* * *

**A/N:**** Emptying your bowels is a natural reaction to extreme pain. Uncool, I know, but also realistic. **

**Snape's lack of fight against Quirrell, though he could arguably beat even a Voldemort possessed Quirrell, is covered next chapter from his Pov. Bear with me, please. **


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:**** Been a while. Had exams to give, a short vacation to get through, and a bout of illness to combat. Everything's all right now, though. **

**Since it has been a while, I'd recommend giving the previous chapter a quick glance, if only to refresh your memory. Not entirely necessary, though. As a summary: Hermione and Snape got tortured by Voldemort (Quirrell-mort?), and Hermione was hit by a spell at the end before the world went dark.**

**Chapter is in second person present. Probably my first and last experiment with that style for this fic. I had a gut feeling that this chapter needed the directness and immediacy of both second person and present tense, and I also felt like experimenting. Either way, the 'you' referred to in this chapter is Severus Snape. **

* * *

**Chapter 12**

It is not the bobble of your head or the wobble of your knees that speaks of failure; nor indeed the scratchiness that clouds the eye and casts by and by upon your visage a tracery of tears— frozen for long by your dismissal of the ennui brought to you by the years, but condensed now by a guilt and grief peculiar to this night. No, not that, none of that, speaks quite as succinctly of failure as the sediment that settles in your soul; the quiet sorrow that sets in, sets itself upon you as you raise your wand and make your choice, saddened, not at saving the girl's life, but at the primrose of your purpose plucked prior its prime.

The spell you fire is a stunner, and not the killing curse you were tasked with. And then you turn, and as you turn, you turn back too for an instant the years; pent up hate overflows; the blows of fate are ever so acutely felt: your lord has benumbed you, sucked away your joy, made you his spy, prised away your purpose, and now turned all your designs into ash. And in that, he is much like the world, which has been complicit in the wreckage of your world; stamped out of reality the red and the evergreen, that like the discombobulating lights decorating a city slum float by in your impoverished dreams— Lily's memory a sickly yarn spun by a fevered mind, a debauched mockery of the person, a prison of penance that you for all the world never intended to abandon.

Abandoned now by your choice to save the girl. You are a murderer, not a monster. And you are crippled too by the cul de sac you have ventured into: kill the girl, and bring back to power a monster, or save the girl and create as a result a debt that must be someday repaid. A choice that is no choice at all. The Dark Lord remembers. _The Dark Lord remembers_. And though you knew all along that you could beat Quirrell, and beat too in his weakened form his possessor, your master, there was also the awareness that defiance meant death, eventual if not immediate. So you dithered. So you bought time. So you tried to think. So you tried to put off for a while a choice that the girl, at the end, with her foolish act of bravery, took out of your hands.

You are a shell anyway. You have outlasted your use. You can no longer protect _her_ son, so you have nothing left. And all men must die. So what, indeed, is another sacrifice? What indeed, another act of defiance that at the end must make no difference whatsoever? This has defined your life, you muse, as you turn the Dark Lord inside out; this hollow defiance that at the end amounts to nothing, is but an echo, a nod to the ephemeral, far removed from the redolent caverns of eternity that _she_ reposes in and you can never step into. Your transient form has a tryst to keep with the cavity of a crumbling grave. But not today. Not today.

There is at least some amusement to be had on behalf of the Dark Lord's realization of your unexpected treason. His trembling impotence is a terrible thing; in the sputter of spell-fire that follows, the Dark Lord, far removed from his pomp, looks every bit like a man trapped in another man's body. The movements are sluggish, the gait awkward, and as he swears terribly he resembles a two stone overweight muggle break dancer going through a midlife crisis. The image draws, from within the wreck that you are, a humourless huff.

His rage quickens; he plucks from the mouldering pathways of memory an obscure spell. Then a recognition sets in: he is hamstrung by the utter ineptitude of the vessel that holds him. The heavy physical and psychological toll suffocates the spell at the tip of his tongue and sends the words back down his pulsating throat. He starts to bleed. To scream.

There is the sound of a jaw snapping.

You know that the dark arts do terrible things to the muddled, the addled, the mundane, the inarticulate, and the ineffectually weak— Quirrell covers half these categories, and for that reason is a subpar vessel. And though he has defiled his soul for the dark arts, they demand too from the human instrument that transmutes them an ability to tolerate tremendous strain: to wield is to _not_ yield— and Quirrell does not know how to govern his pain, which is quite like a cascade crashing down on a pitcher. You know this because you have been there, have struggled through those sensations despite your prodigious talent. The Dark Lord, unduly confident in his vessel's abilities, and totally lacking in empathy—his brow has never contracted under the woe of not instantly commanding that which he sets eye on— has overcommitted.

You bring him to his knees, then allow yourself a thin-lipped smile; there is pride in your ability to outmanoeuvre this monster, your former master, though he be bedecked in borrowed garb and constrained to an infinitesimal fraction of his actual ability.

Quirrell chokes back a bubble of blood and begs. The phantasm bursts from the back of his brain and, swearing against you a spiteful vengeance, streaks away into the dark. You bring down your wand; the curtain comes down on Quirrell's life. You have spared him an excruciating death, and in doing so doled out a mercy he does not deserve.

You stalk over to the girl, and feel your spine incurve under a slow suffusion of sympathy and regret. Fatigue takes you; you spit out in disgust a runny streak of red. You could've and should've stepped in sooner, but the spy in you would not allow it. Your cover is blown though, and your death set in stone, your purpose sunk with a sad plop in the quicksand of life, so the indignities she suffered with you this night were an exercise in futility.

She is a mess, but thankfully out for the night— a light switched off rather than snuffed out. You feel for her a sense of kinship, then stoop down and take her pulse. It is faint, but she will live.

And, regrettably, life is all you can offer her tonight, for you must take from her her memory of this event. You stand there a moment, debate not doing it, but the risks are too high; the thought that some prying eye might discover through her defenceless mind that your master is still alive, stranded somewhere in the world, stewing in the furnace of that obdurate hate you have stoked in him. . . no, no it is too big a risk.

So, tenderly, almost mournfully, you make that monumental decision. You withdraw from her mind some selective strands of memory and slip those semi solid entities into a conjured container. Then you scoop her up, and set about on the painful task of editing and altering her version of the events experienced.

Like every other night, you will not sleep well tonight.

* * *

Dumbledore's office this solemn night is illuminated by the muted light of a guttering candle. The man himself sits sombre faced. The humour in his eye, the deprecating sigh, the earnest yet gravelly way in which he from time to time pokes fun at you— they are all gone; a tired face, stanched of lifeblood, blanched white in the blue shadows cast about by the low light, sends your way an ambivalent stare. The crooked nose, the jutted lip, the sunken eyes, the burnished beard— oddly out of place— all seem to accentuate the sense of doom and gloom pervading the room; this sense has seized upon your measured mind and left it agitated, to the extent that you have to wilfully stifle the urge to scramble out of your chair and streak down the stairs to check on the girl you left with Pomfrey. Pomfrey recognized the cruciatus, yet asked no questions, and somewhere in this there is a bitter irony. These teachers, they cape themselves as protectors and educators, and stroke their egos over how much they care, but are so easily silenced over something so abominable, and that at your suggestion that Dumbledore would be displeased were the truth to trickle into the wider world through the grapevine of gossip. It is pathetic. Utterly fucking pathetic. _At least I have never put up the pretence of caring_, you think. Hermione Granger could have died today, and Poppy Pomfrey would help bury the body without a soul knowing, if Dumbledore so demanded. And so would you. Scum on earth.

_But Dumbledore would never demand it. _

You shake your head to clear the venom. An excuse. Now that the adrenaline has faded, all you are casting about for is an excuse to avoid an acceptance of your reality—you are a busted tool; you have been ousted as an Order sympathizer; your dreams are dead; your reality is death; and all that stands between you and Azkaban is the man sitting before you. And though you love the liberties that this man has given you, you hate too the shackles he has fettered you in, hate being beholden.

And you are beholden again to bury a truth that you, at the beginning of your battle, recognized. But you must raise the question, if only to confirm your suspicions and satisfy your conscience. You almost laugh. The dark mark on your arm offers as consolation a scalding throb. When did death eaters ever have a conscience?

"You knew," you say, staring at the crooked figure before you.

Dumbledore returns your stare, then bows his head in acquiescence.

"I did," he says simply.

"Did you know when we met at Christmas?" You reach out and fiddle with an obscure orb on his desk. There is only a weary acceptance in you that you have been lied to again. You somehow can't muster enough fucks to give about it.

Dumbledore has the audacity to look shocked. He lets his ugly mug scrunch up in such a way that his nose points at you like an accusing finger.

"Dear me, Severus, you are so hasty to assume the worst of me. I only suspected last week, when Hagrid told me about the unicorns, and my suspicions were confirmed last night, when I ventured into the forest, and discovered in that beautiful thing's butchery residual wisps of dark magic. I have only just had the opportunity to once more bemoan Tom's lack of empathy: his utter disregard of all life, his cruelty in how he draws out an ordeal. That poor, poor animal—"

He sighs deeply, removes his spectacles, rubs his eyes with his free hand, and then continues, his voice quivering ever so slightly:

"It was never my intention to defraud you, dear friend, or deliberately withhold information from you. I intended to tell you everything this weekend. And then we would've carefully considered our next course of action— be it that we confront Tom in his quarters, or use to our advantage our knowledge and settle for subtlety; mayhaps set for him a snare that he would, in the end, fall into. I crafted plans and counterplans today... but alas! They are all rendered redundant. But I do not blame you. No, no, I do not blame you at all."

Though he sounds sincere, and though he might be telling you a part of the truth, you do not believe him. There is still something he isn't telling you—and a cold certainty consumes you: it is something related to her son. Trust between the two of you has always been a tenuous thread, and the scissors of circumstance might've snipped it today entirely. Yet in a corner of your mind you know that your thoughts today are aggravated by the self's loss of itself and by your failure to carry to fruition Lily's legacy. You will die before the boy; your death is an inevitability. Tomorrow will be better, but for the night you want to crawl back into the quiescent womb of quietude and slumber away, or drown your sorrow in a flask—done, done for the day, the week, an entire fucking lifetime.

"I wiped the girl's memory," you say softly.

Dumbledore frowns.

"Hasty, perhaps," he says, "and unnecessary. I have already expressed to you my reservations about the ministry's policy. Violating the sanctity of a prisoner's mind… the thought alone leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth—and this is still a student. To steal from someone an experience so scarring yet so sacred…I fear you have acted injudiciously, Severus."

"I did it to protect myself," you sneer, "and to protect the boy. She's a child. Her mind is too easily pillaged. And I—we—cannot afford to have the Dark Lord return through the sloppiness of a child's slip of tongue, or through a cursory eye cast the way of her mind. Her housemates, after all, are dangerous. And _you_ will not have her re-sorted. I still have on me, however, her memories, and someday, perhaps someday after she graduates, I will take it upon myself to make her a restitution of these memories, if need be."

You stand, and curtly cut off with a wave of your hand the apology that you know he is in the process of offering. Having spent a decade plotting with and picking the mind of Albus Dumbledore has its benefits, after all.

"If that is all, then I will be on my way. I have had a long day." You offer him half a nod and a frigid bow. "And the next time you talk to me of ethicality, headmaster, take a good look in the mirror."

* * *

**A/N:**** I know, I know. Fanfiction writers tend to use obliviate as a reset button, usually when they have messed up, and as a result most readers treat it with great suspicion. I'm not a fan of the approach. That being said, here it doesn't serve that function. Snape's decision here will have far reaching effects in year 2 (I'll tell you about that when we get there), and his cover being blown is a significant deviation from canon, the effects of which will be felt to some extent later on. I'd have avoided it altogether, but logically, it felt to me that this is what Snape would do. **

**Dumbledore's opposition to Snape's method is based on how Harry kept his memories post Philosophers' stone. There was a similar risk in canon, with regard to Harry, of someone taking a look into his memories pre book 4 and realizing that Voldemort is still out there as a shade, but this did not seem to ruffle Dumbledore at all. At the end of the day, I get the impression that Dumbledore, at least on the face of it, resorts to unethicality only if there is no other alternative.**

**At the end of the day, I personally believe that if Snape had a way via which he could realistically keep his cover (please consider that the problem here is-****killing Hermione in this case does nothing except buy him a bit more time: Voldemort's actual test of allegiance here is to have Snape bring him the Philosophers' stone post her death, and that he cannot do; any excuses he makes would be futile too), he would take it, even if it meant killing Hermione. This I infer from the Charity Burbage scene in DH and also his work as a spy. He'd not be jumping with joy at it, but part of being a good spy is keeping your cover even when people you are fond of die, or even when you have to do despicable deeds. Harry (Lily, essentially), sadly, is more important to Snape than Hermione, even now. To pretend otherwise is to completely re-write canon. But this was never an option. So he wasn't forced into that choice.**

**Quirrell's method of death is obviously non-canon, as are the causes related to it. It isn't clear what his abilities were or how talented a wizard he was. It's also unclear whether or not a Voldemort in possession of Quirrell's body would possess even a fraction of the power he did in his own form. I have taken some liberties there. **

**I know I've been saying this a while, but for real this time: Philosophers' stone should be done next chapter. **

**Thank you for reading, and have a great week! If you have time, please leave a review. **


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